By Gregory A. Farley

Telecommuting is catching on. I know it's true because my prime time television viewing hours are constantly interrupted by commercials for powerful home computing solutions and digital telecommunications services. The ads paint a pleasant picture of the work-at-home set teleconferencing with their co-workers and calling the shots on major projects dressed in fuzzy slippers and pajamas. The windows of their home offices are opened wide with the drapes pulled back, and the chittering of happy squirrels is just audible over the hum of the hard drive.

And you know, that's a pretty accurate picture. Because I have worn the fuzzy slippers of the telecommuter, I can attest to the validity of the pajamas and of the squirrels. I have spoken on the telephone with important figures in multinational corporations while feeding my infant son. I have completed important tasks without supervision and returned to the office grateful for a short reprieve from its stress, gossip and fluorescent lighting.


Everybody's a winner (almost)
Frankly, telecommuting is a blast, and it can create tremendous benefits for workers, employers, corporations and communities. Several studies cited by the Telecommuting Advisory Council (TAC) suggest that the number of workers spending at least one day a week at home and on the clock is likely to increase between 20 and 40 percent for the next several years. In California, where the telecommuting movement has grown perhaps its deepest roots, several commercial real estate analysts are already girding their loins in expectation of severely reduced demand for office space.

That fear may be well founded. Throughout the early 1990s, AT&T conducted a telecommuting study at its North Central New Jersey site. By encouraging some 600 employees to spend at least part of the work week at home, the company was able to close an entire office complex, adding about $6.5 million to the bottom line.

The promise of reduced costs provided the initial impetus for the telecommuting movement -- management saw an opportunity to add staff without incurring additional costs for office space. But for companies willing to send their workers home to their jobs, there are other bottom-line bonus benefits.

In January 1994, a group of Silicon Valley companies (Hewlett Packard, 3Com, Deloitte & Touche, Pacific Bell, Silicon Graphics and others) began a pilot study -- the Smart Valley project -- to determine the feasibility of telecommuting. One of the study's early findings showed that work-at-home days were 25 percent more productive than days spent in the office, attributable to the absence of meetings and other distractions.


The air that we breathe
Telecommuting creates other, big-picture impacts. The Clinton administration has endorsed the idea wholeheartedly, in the belief that the federal government should take the point in developing flexible "quality worklife programs."

The Environmental Protection Agency is rallying behind telecommuting as one solid step toward helping major cities meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act. Keeping more cars parked in driveways during the workweek could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. During the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta last year, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division gathered evidence indicating that reduced traffic congestion in the city actually improved air quality on at least four days. The result is that no ground-level ozone occurred on the four days and no air quality violations occurred during the Games.

The Telecommuting Advisory Council also suggests that a nation of telecommuters will help to reinvigorate the nation's neighborhoods, churches and schools, simply because more citizens will have more time to participate in community activities. And if more people are at home more often, crime in our neighborhoods will almost certainly decrease.


Get a life
Harvard economics professor Juliet Schor, in her book "The Overworked American," reports that the average American work-year is one month longer than it was in the 1940s. Tack onto that an hour or two of commuting time, and you have a work force in dire need of relief. For those who telecommute, time that would ordinarily be spent in traffic can instead be spent grocery shopping, visiting your children's school, talking with your spouse. It provides the worker with the ability to balance the demands of career with the demands of the family, to control how and when tasks are performed. A job left undone from the morning can be completed at night after the kids are in bed.

"We need to articulate a vision that is oriented toward a higher quality of life," Schor has written, a vision that stresses "employment security and control over work and leisure time, not necessarily 3 percent income growth every year."

Telecommuting is a step toward realizing that vision. The TAC cites a survey of 3,000 employees conducted by the Families and Work Institute that found one in four participants would drop their job like a hot potato given an opportunity to take a new job that allowed them to work at home.

It's good to have a job, but it's great to have a job and a life, don't you think?

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