Today is Telework Day in Virginia

Virginia's Governor Timothy Kaine has been a model for telecommuting as evidenced by his strong support for telework programs within Virginia's state government. Earlier this year, he issued an executive order part of which encourages employers to explore the potential that telecommuting arrangements could hold for their organizations. Another important part of that order declared August 3, 2009 as Virginia Telework Day.

Tom Harnish and Kate Lister are two well-known authors and researchers on the topic of working from home and telecommuting. In fact, they developed a Telework Savings Calculator that gives companies a rundown on what they could be saving by allowing employees to telecommute. Just for fun, the potential effects of Virginia Telework Day were run through the calculator. The results, which are astonishing to say the least, are detailed in their Virginia Telework Day blog post. Here are just a few excerpts from the results, calculated to see what would happen if just 20% of Virginians who do not already telecommute worked from home for one day:

• The environment would be saved from 8,200 tons or greenhouse gases—the equivalent of taking 1,491 cars off the road for a year
• Businesses would save 5.3 million kilowatt hours of electricity worth $563,000. The net savings in electricity could power 344 homes for a year.
• 15 people would be saved from traffic-related injury or death.
• Employees would have an extra 55 minutes of free time that day—time they’d have otherwise spent commuting.

To me, it's bit mind-boggling to think what the statistics would look like if telecommuting and telework were embraced nationwide (even worldwide) on a regular basis. I salute Governor Kaine for bringing attention to these important issues.

Telecommuting Resources

Leave a Comment

Name*

Email: (never displayed)*

URL

Your Comment*

Line and paragraph breaks are automatic. Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title="">, <b>, <i>, <strike>

Say It!