Study Reveals Current Trends in Telecommuting, in Public and Private Sectors

ZDNet reports on a CDW study revealing trends in telecommuting in the public and private sectors:

Why do most companies still resist the idea of letting employees work outside of the home office?

Working remotely offers obvious advantages, not the least being it helps employees avoid wasting time they could otherwise devote to their work. Yet only 16 percent of the people working in the private sector believe their companies let them telecommute, according to a new CDW study.

There are strong arguments in favor of telecommuting or what is also referred to as “telework.” Commuters face significant increases in traffic congestion in all 437 metropolitan areas in the United States. Adding up all the associated costs, the Texas Transportation Institute earlier this year concluded that gridlock cost $78 billion annually in terms of 4.2 billion lost hours, not to mention 2.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel.

But this is more than a matter of statistics.

As the CDW study points out, telecommuting is much more prevalent in the public sector than the private sector:

Forty-four percent of Federal employees indicate that they have the option to telework – up 6 percent from 2006 – while just 15 percent of private-sector employees have that option. During the past year, telework growth in the Federal government also outpaced the private sector: 35 percent of Federal teleworkers started teleworking, compared to 10 percent of private-sector teleworkers.

It’s not widely known that the Federal government has been so proactive in offering employees the option of telecommuting. Here’s an informative video on the subject.