Roxy's Blog

Companies can "go green" in many different ways ... from the companies they choose to partner with or the stocks offered in retirement portfolios, but the biggest impact an employer can have on the environment (both Mother Earth and their business) is allowing employees to telecommute.

Just the word commute conjures up images of free-way parking lots, distressed drivers and the accompanying cacophony of rush hour sounds.  After emerging from this discordance, employees are expected to "get down to business" for the next 9 hours, all the while looking forward to when they will "get" to do it all again -- just to get home.  There has to be a better way.

Preparing an organization for employee telecommuting can take some planning and re-inventing of standard procedures ...  Creating a virtual workspace Many business functions can be virtualized:  

• Communications
  • VoIP - Voice over IP solutions can turn a "home" office into a "work" office.
  • Chat and Messenger - GoogleTalk allows for voice/chat/video chat/file drop
  • Desktop sharing - for sales, training and support
  • Document sharing and collabrative workspaces - GoogleDocs allows sharing and editing by individuals and workgroups.
  • eMail and mail groups
• CMS - collabrative site-building, online community (private or public),
• CRM - Sales and Customer management
• Accounting
  • eCommerce 
  • Ordering
  • Recurring billing
  • Payments
• Project Management

  How many of your office functions could be virtualized?   But, what about employee productivity? Are employees who work from home as productive? According to a 2008 survey:   In a word, yes. A recent survey released by CompTIA Reseach indicates that when companies give workers the option of telecommuting, they are seeing greater productivity, lower costs, improved employee health and greater employee retention [...].  Planet Green has an excellent overview of the ways a company can go green and some tips on matching an employer with your own "green" ideals.