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Knowledge base
General
resources
JALA International, the site of Jack Nilles who invented the term
"telecommuting" in 1973.
Gil Gordon began working in the
telework field in 1982.
His site contains a great deal of useful information, together with many
links to other information sources.
David Fleming is another
US-based consultant providing many links on his site.
Other US sites that could be worth visiting include
Ken Robertson and Telecommute
America (on
ITAC's site).
Bob Fortier operates a useful
web site containing a comprehensive selection of
recent (and archived) news.
European Telework Online,
UK Telecommuters Association
and
Andrew Bibby have information
about telework in Europe.
Online
resources for new ways of working are available at
www.flexibility.co.uk.
Within Network Fusion's web site
there is
a useful selection of articles and resources.
In New Zealand, useful reference sites include
Occupational Safety and Health,
the
Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority,
and the
Equal Employment Opportunities Trust.
www.teleworkva.org includes
free, interactive e-learning tools as well as other resources.
Information about the Japanese situation can be found at
http://www.japan-telework.or.jp/english/english_002.html.
The Satellite Office Association of Japan (SOAJ)
is a non-profit organization promoting telework centers and home offices.
If you are interested in information about telework in
Bulgaria this
link could be a good place to
start.
100 Top Telecommuting Websites
is a portal/clearinghouse sponsored by the World Environmental
Organization (http://www.world.org/).
At
Content Village, there is an extensive collection of links dealing
with eWork, in all its forms.
The New York Times, has a comprehensive
article about the state of
telework in Virginia.
Noel Hodson is a UK-based consultant and researcher dealing in
telework, among other subjects.
Information about telework in Italy is available
here.
The Australian state of Victoria has
a selection of telework-related resources available.
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Business links
The
Telecommuting Jobs
website offers a number of tools for employers, helping to set up
and manage the Work at Home Workforce.
The US Federal Government
has made its
Telework Technology
Cost Study available online.
This site provides
links to a number of resources that could be useful to companies intending
to implement telework programmes.
Future
@ Work provides a vision of a work place of the future.
The costs of turnover
from Bliss Associates
An introductory
article from Information Week.
"Work
Naked" a book
that provides a general introduction to Cynthia Froggatt's approach to
alternative workplaces. (See also her
article on this site.)
Overwork and working long hours are major
problems. For more information on this check out Overwork
on
this page.
A US Computerworld
article contains the suggestion that 36% of employees would prefer
telework to a salary rise. For employers who are looking for teleworkers to assist with specific
projects, there are some sites listed under
selected individual
resources. Two of the most useful might be
PortaJobs which has databases for
both job seekers and employers and
www.globaltelecommute.com.
www.theworknet.com also provides
affordable, professional contractors and freelancers. Post your
projects for free.
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Government initiatives
The US Federal Office of Personnel Management has been
promoting telework within the US Government for many years. Their
report on the status of telework
within the public service was published in August 2009.
The Australian Government set up the
Telework Australia web
site in 2007.
This
page introduces
Arlington County's telework initiative. It could be useful for local
government organisations who are planning telework initiatives.
How did Mayor White of Houston
make the benefits of flexible work accessible to his city's employers?
Read this
4-page article.
The
US Federal Government is heavily involved in promoting and implementing telecentres
and telecommuting, on many levels.
There are a number of European telework-based
initiatives. Information is available at
European Telework Online.
A novel
partnership between
five Western US States focuses on educating and inspiring
employers and managers.
A resource covering the development and operation of
the Federal telecentre network in the US. A variety of other Federal
resources are available
on the web.
The USA General Services Administration and Office of Personnel
Management have their own
web site.
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For the Individual
Wowjobs New
Zealand (www.wowjobs.co.nz)
claims to be the largest job search engine in New Zealand, aggregating
jobs from hundreds of job sites, career pages and employer sites across
New Zealand.
Rat Race Rebellion,
maintained by Christine Durst and Michael Haaren, who provide
virtual-career training to the US Department of State, offers screened
telework jobs and projects and a weekly telework jobs bulletin at no
charge.
Check out the resources at
Homebizbuzz. There is also a
networking organisation for home
businesses on Auckland's North Shore and a New Zealand
organisation to help writers
promote their services, for a small fee.
www.globaltelecommute.com provides some suggestions on how to better
market your services.
www.elance.com/,
www.ework.com, and
www.tjobs.com, all offer online
marketplaces
www.professionalcity.com/: "the
online resource centre for today's professional"
www.techweb.com/smallbiz offers
"The Internet's Big Edge for small Business"
www.youcanworkfromanywhere.com,
dedicated to providing you with information, tips, tools, and more
Rosalind Mays,
author of The real deal on Telecommuting hosts a
site with jobs listings
and other resources.
www.sb.gov.bc.ca provides a number of resources for those wanting to
start-up their own home business.
www.telework.org.uk has been set up as a portal for SOHO, home
business, telework and working from home.
There is a case study of
one person who now teleworks in Edinburgh available
here.
Women's Job
Search is specifically for women
seeking career advancement.
If you are unemployed
or if you are just starting out, this
reference could be useful.
Worldwide
Work At Home offers information and resources relating to work at
home jobs, telecommuting, freelance work, home business ideas and more.
Annette Koch has built a website that offers moms legitimate work from
home in her wholesale program. She also offers resources to help moms find
telecommuting jobs. Koch's site,
http://www.annettekoch.com celebrated their grand opening February 21,
2006
Careerjet is an employment search
engine for New Zealand that allows you to search a growing selection of
jobs listed on company sites as well as jobsites in one go.
The
Work at Home Shop
provides a place where you can find home based business and Internet
opportunities.
PortaJobs which has databases for
both job seekers and employers with lots of telework resource information.
Some other employment sites, in no particular order:
Seek,
www.career.co.nz, and
www.tmp.com
www.homeworking.com, and
telecommuting.about.com/
can help
you get started, find work, and avoid scams
Paul and Sarah Edwards have a
variety of resources and articles on their "Working from Home" site.
www.hbwm.com,
www.momsrefuge.com and
www.ivillage.com could have some
useful links and information for home-based parents
www.homeworkers.org is the site
of the Independent Homeworkers Alliance (IHA).
Listings for artists, desktop publishers, web design and
more are available on
this site.
Workaholics 4 Hire offers advice
for virtual job hunters.
Jobs for Programmers provides programmers with
opportunities to work from home on their own computer.
www.monster.com/ and
www.hotjobs.com/ are big job
boards: use "telecommuting" to search for jobs.
www.computerjobs.com/ also offers computer and technical related
positions
Phil Montero has made available
a book providing an
invaluable resource for those seeking telework employment.
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Telecentres and Community resources
In the field of telecentres, there are
many examples of what is possible on the Internet. Among them are:
The
West Australians have created a network of
130 (and growing)
community-owned, managed and incorporated Telecentres throughout
regional Western Australia.
"Proxima",
a telecentre project set up in 1997 in the town of Sesto San Giovanni.
The
Blue Line
is a light rail project in Los Angeles.
www.devmedia.org/Papers.cfm, a
collection of articles
Some initiatives are basically 'conceptual'
at this stage.
An interesting
article about telecentres in Estonia. There are
over 32 of them.
A solid
article entitled: Applying the lessons of participatory
communication and training to rural telecentres.
We have a great deal of additional information available.
Drop us a line.
There is also a great deal of information in the more
general
communities area.
Donnie Morrison operates a
rural teleworking initiative
focused on creating jobs in a remote area (the Isle of Lewis, Scotland).
Citizens online an example of what
we could be doing.
For a more rural feel,
Boulder and
West Australia offer examples.
And if you are interested in political communities,
Democracy Online might be a place
to start.
Communities can cover
specific States (Victoria)
or cities (http://www.waitakereonline.co.nz).
In New Zealand
Community Net Aotearoa could be
helpful and there are other resources at
Converge.
The
TechSoup web site provides a comprehensive collection of information
specifically for non-profit staff.
Full Circle Associates is a consultancy specialising
in building on-line communities and workspaces.
This
paper examines the impact of information technologies on rural
communities.
The
Nonprofit Tech Association has
some useful information and resources
A major
report published by the Rockefeller Foundation, entitled Community
Building and the Future of Urban America.
If you’re wondering where to start with your local community, this
site provides an American perspective.
In
my own area, Waitakere City (the western side of Auckland),
there are community networks active including
Karekare, and
Laingholm.
And some work has been done on a much
bigger initiative for the City.
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Products
and services
Attend Anywhere is an Australian company specialising in providing a
'communications platform' using high-definition video conferencing
technology.
Not only does
Skype provide free person-to-person video calling and economical
VoIP telephone calling but it can also be used for instant messaging and
has a range of "extra" applications that can provide file sharing,
desk-sharing, conferencing and other collaboration tools.
Citrix Online's GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and GoToMyPC products
provide a range of on-line meeting and presentation services for users
who do not require (or do not have the bandwidth for) video interaction.
Dim Dim provides an innovative platform for on-line meetings,
whiteboards, chat, desk- and file-sharing, and presentations. This open
source product is available free, with some limitations.
Group 4 Networks provides a virtual PC accessible over the Internet
at any time using a 'software as service' model.
Cisco provides a wide range of products for online working and meeting.
Of particular interest are its
telepresence options and its
online meeting tools.
Ozone
Conferencing claims to be the UK's most advanced teleconferencing
and webconferencing company.
CO2NeutralConferencing.com is one of the world’s first carbon
neutral providers of audio, web, video and event conferencing solutions.
The whole purpose of the business is to help businesses reduce their
carbon footprint by using conferencing technology rather than travelling
to non-essential face to face meetings.
SureTime is a product specifically designed to help managers and
teleworkers monitor and manage billing for tasks and projects.
it's a particularly useful tool for managing people who are 'out of
sight'. More information is available
here.
"Whether
it is an email, Word document, fax, video, photo or scanned document,
our solutions store critical business information for immediate access
from anywhere."
Redmap has won
Australian export awards.
Axon is a major New Zealand systems integrator with a capability mix
that can assist organisations looking to turn their mobility strategies
into reality.
Cogent is a leading business
telecommunications solutions provider which can offer you intelligent
and practical advice about your telephony needs, including solutions
specifically designed for extending business telephony functionality to
mobile and remote workers.
Myactions is a New Zealand based service that could help manage
remote staff.
TALK
is a telecommunications service providing international, national and
land to mobile calls at competitive rates.
TargetFax is a market leader in
implementing e-Document delivery and workflow solutions.
TaxWeb provides online accounting and tax return filing services
aimed at not for profit organisations, small business and their agents
-- could be useful for self-employed home-workers...
Telecom
has a range of remote working solutions that can help New Zealand
businesses save money and improve customer service.
Teltone's remote
voice, telecom test, and line sharing products give remote call center
agents and other telecommuters seamless access to the corporate PBX/ACD.
Wairua Consulting is a New Zealand-based consultancy and research
organisation that empowers people and organisations to achieve real
results through the effective use of information and communication
technologies.
WorkSpace3D
offers customisable
3D virtual environments
where each user is shown as a virtual
character (avatar) that sees through this character’s eyes and interacts
with multiple applications presented in a 3D environment. The
third dimension allows users to create virtual workspaces that are more
user-friendly and accessible.
More information is available from
John Acton.
www.officeshopdirect.com is
an information site that provides consumer information about the latest
trends in office equipment and computer peripherals
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Miscellaneous statistics
...handle with care...
The 2009 Sensis report on teleworking in Australia is now
available as a PDF.
The Sloan Work and Family Research network has prepared
a fact sheet including statistics about telework.
The 2007 Sensis report covering the Australian
situation is available as a PDF
here.
THOUSANDS of Scots are turning their backs on the daily grind of the
office and are working from home using new technology. Research for
the Scottish Executive shows 13.5% of working adults now spend at least
some of their working hours at their own desk.
The proportion of people who could telework in the future is expected to
reach 40% but researchers warn it is unlikely to exceed that figure
without some form of major economic restructuring.
More...
In September 1996 and September 1998, COG conducted
telephone household surveys to obtain information on teleworking in the
Washington metropolitan region. More than 1,000 households were
interviewed for each survey.
A new benchmarking study of employers in both the public and private
sectors was conducted by the Telework Coalition during the last weeks of
February and first week of March, 2006. An important finding is that
virtual work, mobile work, telecommuting, telework, or distributed work,
whatever it is called, is now regarded as 'Just Work'. One point that was
consistent throughout the study was that telework plays a significant role
in business continuity and continuity of operations planning. An
executive summary of this study is available at
http://www.TelCoa.org.
An ITAC survey (1999) found that employers can save 63% of the cost of
absenteeism per teleworking employee, reduce retention and recruitment
costs by US$7920 per teleworker and increase productivity by 22%.
According to Point Topic's first
Broadband User Survey there are some 4.3 million households, 18% of
all homes in the UK, with someone working from home. 70% or 3.1 million
of these use the internet as a working tool. The figures show a total of
5.4 million individuals working from home.
Noel Hodson, a British-based telework consultant has compiled an
eclectic
collection of statistics.
A selection of quick statistics is provided on
this page. (Be careful to check the
dates of the research and the definitions used.)
A national (US) survey conducted for ITAC in 2005 asked
respondents to check up to 13 different locations where they may have
worked in the previous month. The survey found that out of 135.4 million
American workers:
* 45.1 million worked from home,
* 24.3 million people worked at client's or customer's place of
business,
* 20.6 million in their car,
* 16.3 million while on vacation,
* 15.1 million at a park or outdoor location, and
* 7.8 million while on a train or airplane.
Among the 45.1 million Americans working from home, the average number
of locations they work from is 3.4. More details on this research
can be found at
www.workingfromanywhere.org.
According to an IDC report entitled Australia Telecommuting
Services and Equipment 2004 - 2008 Forecast and Analysis, 2.8
million Australians are mobile workers, with this figure set to increase
to 3.4 million by 2008.
A
Sensis report (2005) released by the Australian ICT Minister, Helen Coonan, showed that 30% of Australians have teleworked at some point and
more than a third of SMEs use teleworking. 73% of businesses
indicated that teleworking had clear benefits and allowed greater
work/life balance for employees.
A Paris-based consulting
firm recently relocated more than 1000 staff and saved £650,000 as a result. They had realised
that staff spent up to 80% of their time away from their
desks and planned accordingly. The new floor plan was
based on a target ratio of 5m2 per person but this was only
part of the equation. A much more important component of the plan
was a change in the company culture - rather than spend on buying more
office space, they invested in planning how the work could be done.
Mellon Financial Corporation's Human Resources & Investor
Solutions business surveyed of over 600 employers in Jan '04 and found
that employers seem to be responding to their employees' needs for
work/life balance. Reasons include: to enhance recruitment efforts (73%);
to raise morale (74%); and to remain competitive (72%). The results (with 1996 survey
results in brackets) were as follows:
Companies who offer:
Flex-time -- 71% (32%)
Telecommuting, work-at-home arrangements --
50% (9%)
Compressed work weeks -- 44% (16%)
Part-time (fewer than 1000 hours per year) -- 86% (50%)
Family sick days -- 54% (42%)
Domestic partner benefits -- 35% (6%)
Work-related tuition reimbursement -- 88%
General resource and referral services -- 55%
Unpaid family leave beyond legislated requirements -- 47%
The SusTel report by the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental
Development found between 25% and
75% of staff working longer hours when they did not
commute. Productivity rose by up to 80% and quality of work
increased up to 77%. More than 86% believed that they had more
control over their lives and the way that they worked, and more than half
of the workers felt healthier.
Australia had a workforce of 9 million in June 2000 and around 224,000 of those employees "mainly" worked at home.
Separate ABS research found that about 430,000 employees spent at least
some of their working life at home in 2000.
More...
Ever wondered how much pollution you could avoid if
you didn't drive? Check
this calculator.
In an online survey of Washington area
businesses, three out of four respondents (74%) classified their
telecommute / telework programs as successful or very successful.
More....
CCH has reported that employers
struggle with the high cost of absenteeism, and that flexible scheduling and
telecommuting were major ways of reducing the costs. Click
here for more on the survey.
Did you know: that a single
litre of fuel produces 2.298 kilograms of carbon dioxide? For the record, an average car probably
produces 0.23 kg of CO2 for every kilometre of commuting – excluding
time spent at traffic lights.
I’d like to thank Liz Yeaman at
the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority in
Wellington for the following piece of information: "On
average, a workplace car park in New Zealand costs $10,000
per year, for each car space. It’s prime CBD
space that is being wasted."
A study of 1,200
young workers
conducted by
Catalyst
surprised the pollsters by showing they were more interested in
workplace flexibility than in perks like gym memberships and onsite food
services.
The latest numbers show a nearly 40 percent growth in
the number of US federal teleworkers. Agencies reported 74,487
federal teleworkers as of October 1, 2001, a 39.5 percent increase since
the last review seven months earlier.
The February 2002 issue of American Demographics
magazine highlighted ITAC Telework America research that showed four out
of 10 teleworkers (42%) varied their work location, 24% reported that
they worked solely from the road, while 22% reported working entirely
from home. Pent-up demand for telecommuting was strong too.
According to the study, about 14.5 million Americans would like to be
able to telecommute.
The number of employees who telework in the United States
increased to 28.8 million, for a jump of almost 17%, during 2003.
Apparently,
around five percent (67,200) of commuters telework in the Phoenix
area (up from 62,500 teleworkers last year), which is an average trip
savings of 1.7 million miles per week and 62,400 lbs. of pollution.
Since tracking began, in 1993, telecommuting in the region has increased
by 248% or by 48,000 commuters.
A recent study by
Office Team, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based staffing services firm, asked
respondents to rate their number-one career worry. Nearly a third (32%) of workers polled answered that the ability to balance business
and personal demands was their top priority.
The vast majority of workers at mid-size and large companies work
regularly with people they cannot see. More than 80 percent of full-time
American employees either labor off-site or work with others who work at a
distance, according to a new survey conducted by the American Business
Collaboration.
More...
In a survey of call center executives, Wideforce
Systems Inc., a remote workforce management software company, concluded
that telework improves employee retention. Seventy seven percent of call
center managers report less than a 20 percent annual turnover rate when
using remote agents whereas 50 percent of managers who use traditional
workers report annual turnover rates of more than 20 percent. In addition,
call center managers employing a remote workforce experienced a 12 percent
increase in productivity.
A May 2002 study predicted that half the US workforce
would work remotely by 2006.
More...
More than two million people in the
UK rely on phones and computers to work at least one day a week at home,
new research
(June 2002) suggests. The figure, drawn from data
collected in spring 2001, is an increase of more than two thirds on
comparable figures from 1997. They now make up just over 7% of the UK
workforce.
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