by Anita Campbell
December 3, 2008 at 2:10 am
· Filed under Distributed Work, Talent Management
A recent CareerBuilder.com article on CNN notes three different inquiries that companies need to make before deciding on whether to allow someone to work from home. A company like Aetna insurance, for example, looks at:
- The person – Is the person suited for a work-at-home position? (Presumably this has to do with having self-discipline and the ability to work without close supervision or constant reinforcement.)
- The location – Is the employee’s home environment suitable for remote work? Do they have an office set up? Is the environment stable and business-friendly? (I am guessing those 14 dogs barking the background wouldn’t be considered business friendly.)
- The job – Is the job one that lends itself to working remotely? (Some jobs are easier than others to work remotely from.)
Aetna has got to be the poster child of teleworking: according to the article “10,000 Aetna employees, or 27 percent of the company’s work force, now work from home.”
Teleworking is not an issue reserved for large enterprises, however. Many small businesses face the same issues in deciding whether to have remote workers.
Take, for instance, the small business owners who work out of their homes (from 12 – 15 million, depending on whose numbers you believe). When they bring on employees — or perhaps more commonly, independent contractors — out of necessity, those employees and contractors tend to work out of their own respective homes, too.
And home-based businesses with employees are more common than you’d think. For instance, a recent study of home based businesses found that almost half had employees!
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Anita, Thanks for the stream of telework updates and cases of companies who are leading the way.
I noticed your “27 percent of the company’s (Aetna’s) work force, now work from home”. I’ve been at conferences where IBM presented and mentioned numbers as high as 45% of employees working remotely. I wonder if you have insight into the latest on IBM’s telework program for an update and or if a TheAppGap reader from IBM can inform the discussion, please.
Amanda wrote @ December 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
The employee is definitely the first factor to consider. They can have the best of circumstances to work in but if they are not organised and disciplined enough, the work will eventually suffer.
I agree Amanda. Employees do really play a very important role for the success or may be failure to our business.
Anita: Do you have figures on how many are working from home in total? I don’t think it has become so big here in Sweden, only in certain areas there you could use “tele commuting”.
Jenny, IBM had telework programs running in Europe 10 years ago that were giving 40-50% of employees.
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IBM’s presentation – from the archives – so slow and strange
http://www.martech-intl.com/awards/html/slide_1e.html
Ian. THANK YOU. What a presentation treasure and even better that it is available on the Web. We have a LOT to for which to thank Tim Berners Lee.
I hadn’t appreciated IBM Telework dated so far back. As an alumni of the IBM & Sears pre-Web PRODIGY Services Company, that created the consumer online market in the US, I never fail to be impressed with IBM’s commitment to research and willingness to explore new territory.
Sydney wrote @ February 22nd, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Yeah, it’s absolutely right! I am totally agreed with your Article. This is great! I love seeing success stories of people connecting on the digital frontier! But we should not forget that there is a big recession period is going on and definitely it was a very hard truth for us but we shouldn’t disappoint with it. We should face the problem as we all know that life is not a bed of roses so we should have patience and i hope the recession period will be end as soon as possible. Great post and I look forward to reading more! 
.My goal is to leverage that experience and transition to a career as a web strategist or web project manager someday.
Sydney
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