Minnesota Launches eWorkPace Funded By Transportation Dollars To Encourage More Telecommuting

Telecommuting is one of those issues that falls under the umbrella of Work-Life Balance/Integration/Fit. It is usually promoted as a flexibility issue --as a way to help families whose work-life schedule needs flexibility to deal with real-life issues like children and elderly parents.

Telecommuting advocates also say that telecommuting increases employee productivity and retention. Yet, the majority of American businesses are not fans of telecommuting. "Just 3% of employers nationally allow some teleworking," says Susan Seitel, president of WFC Resources.

Seitel shared that statistic during a presentation at a When Work Works event on September 29, 2009, to recognize Minnesota companies which earned a Alfred P. Sloan award for workplace flexibility. Over 70% of the Minnesota companies that applied for the award offer telecommuting.

All companies that earned a spot on Working Mothers 2009 list of the 100 Best Companies To Work For offer telecommuting.

A full 100 percent of them offer telecommuting and flextime schedules, 98 percent offer job-sharing, and 94 percent offer compressed workweeks. These companies are also committed to helping working parents with their child-care needs: 86 percent provide backup care, and 62 percent provide sick-child care. But perhaps even more important is the family-friendly culture they all continually strive to create.

Which brings us to a new program designed to promote telecommuting in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. It's called eWorkPlace. Instead of focusing the traditional benefit of flexibility, this program takes a more circuitous route to get companies to support telecommuting: cars. Specifically, the benefit to the community of having fewer cars on the road each day.

With funding from both the federal government and the Minnesota Department of Transportation, eWorkPlace is encouraging businesses to allow employees to telecommute at least once a week to relieve gridlock on Twin Cities highways, save commuting time, and reduce the amount of road repair needed each year.

* If 2,700 Minnesotans teleworked one day per week, that would potentially remove over 1,000 rush hour trips per day on Twin City freeways. 

The Environmental Protection Agency says if just 10 percent of the nation's workforce telecommuted just one day a week, Americans would conserve more than 1.2 gallons of fuel per week.

About 9% of workers in Minnesota telecommute. Whether the current percentage of Minnesotan telecommuters is higher or lower than the national average is anyone's guess. Adeel Laari, Program Director of eWorkPlace says, "there are no scientifically valid studies on telecommuting."  He adds, "If eWorkPlace is successful another 2,700 Twin Cities residents will work from home at least 1 day a week."

In doing research for eWorkPlace, Laari says the majority of employees want to telecommute and according to their research nearly 80% of jobs could be conducted with a telecommuting component. "The problem, says Laari, "are the employers. They are afraid."

What are they afraid of? You name it: control, employees not putting in a full day's work, disruption of the "team," and of course basic jealousy that some people get to work at home while others don't.

That conversation happened to a good friend of mine just this week. She is starting a new job and has to do a lot of phone calling for the next week. She shares a cubby with several other people and asked if she could work at home to make the calls privately. Her employer's response was, "How would everyone else feel if you got to do this at home and they didn't?"  

Of course, the right response would have been, "Why can't they make the calls at home?"

eWorkPlace asks employers to just try it for a three month trial. For agreeing to test the concept eWorkPlace provides free consulting, IT support, and managers and employees have access to free online courses on how to have a successful working relationship when a member of the team is telecommuting.

Writing on her blog about Work-Life Trends, Seitel says employers need to be convinced that employees will be more productive if they have the option to telecommute one or two days a week.

"It means trusting employees to do what they say they will, but it also necessitates training managers to set goals with their staff, being clear about what success will look like and how they'll measure it, and knowing how results will be verified. Once managers become adept at doing this their load actually becomes lighter and employees are more satisfied, fulfilled, and able to handle their responsibilities at home as well as at work."

The University of Minnesota will be tracking participants in eWorkPlace to find out how much gas is saved, how much time is saved and whether or not the employees and employers believe productivity increases when people can telecommute at least once a week.

Will an easier commute to work really motivate companies that have been reluctant to offer telecommuting? It does seem a bit of a reach. As Susan Seitel said, "A funny thing happened on the way to the launch of eWorkPlace - a recession." Even without companies committing to the program, Twin Cities highways have fewer cars on them because fewer people have jobs to drive to. The reality is eWorkPlace has it work cut out for itself.

Elana blogs about business culture at FunnyBusiness