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2007
Conference Report:
Telecommunications helps in emergencies. You can hear and see Joanne
Pratt's presentation,
Earthquake and Fire: When Virtual Alternatives Offer an Answer at
the Transportation Research Board Panel Session: Major Disruptions
to Personal Travel: Behavioral Responses and the Role of
Telecommunications.
Survey Methods
A the TRB conference, it was personally gratifying to hear
enthusiastic praise for the survey that I designed for the Southern
California Association of Governments (SCAG). Wall, Safirova and Jiang,
authors of "What Drives Telecommuting? The Relative Impact of Worker
Demographics, Employers Characteristics, and Job Types," pointed to the
good employer and job information that large survey datasets usually
lack and the careful separation of home-based business owners from true
employee and contract telecommuters. A consultant for NuStats on that
survey, I am available to others concerned with accurately understanding
the new mobile workforce.
2006
Conference Report:
At the May 2006 conference, Innovations in Travel Demand Modeling, speakers
emphasized telecommuting as one strategy to mitigate travel to and from
work. However, the most innovative papers revealed new approaches
to monitoring trips, using GPS-enabled personal digital assistant
devices and micro chips to record details of an individual's travel to
work, to see friends, run errands, and capture all of their other
trips. Considering the low response rates of telephone surveys,
electronic tracking suggests an efficient way to collect data for
modeling future transportation needs, but raises questions of violating
individuals' privacy.
Program and
selected papers
Telework Breakthrough:
The Montgomery County Public School System has become the first
school system that we know of anywhere to adopt telework. Joanne Pratt has
guided the implementation process as consultant for the Baltimore
Metropolitan council (BMC) and the Metropolitan Washington Council of
Governments (MWCOG) Telework Partnership with Employers (TPE), which
provides free professional telework consulting services to help
employers plan and implement telework programs.
New Teleworker Counts:
How many teleworkers are there? New data updates the
story.
Newly released data from federal and private surveys reports that
the number of teleworkers ranges from 45.1 million or one-third of
employed adults who "ever do any kind of work at home related to [their]
job, self-employment or to supplement [their] income" to 22.2 million or
16.4 percent who work at home at least once a week.
The 2005 data from The Dieringer Research Group American Interactive
Consumer Survey (AICS) are very close to the 2004 federal Current
Population Survey (CPS) results that found 20.7 million people
working at home at least once per week on their primary job. Most are
wage and salary employees--13.7 million--but 7 million are self-employed
in incorporated or non-incorporated sole proprietorships. Including the
1.9 million Americans who telework on a second job, the total of 22.6
million represents 16.5 percent of employed adults.
Read more.
2005
Conference Report:
Joanne Pratt moderated a lively discussion of the "Implications of
Information and Communications Technologies for the Travel Behavior of
Teens: What Does the Future Hold?" during the 84th annual
Transportation Research Board conference in Washington. Speakers
from Canada, Germany, Japan and the U.S. speculated on how the behavior
of teens would impact their travel as adults. An audience member gave an
interesting contribution: in Korea friends instant message their peer
group to arrange a meeting at, say, a Japanese restaurant. Someone may
message back that he doesn't like sushi. An instant follow-up message
alerts everyone to meet instead at a Chinese restaurant. In this
instance, the time of the meeting does not change, but use of technology
changes the location.
2004
"Measuring the Information Society," held September 30 -
October 1, 2004 in Brussels, presented the findings of the three-year
Statistical Indicators of the Labour Market eEconomy (STILE) project,
funded by the European Union.
See
my presentation, "The Latest Telework: the Latest Figures and what
they mean," in which I compare the latest national labor force data for participating European
countries and the U.S.
A
newletter summarizing the conference is now available.
New research:
A new analysis by Allison King of pre-and post surveys that I
collected during telework implementation at the Texas Natural Resource
Conservation Commission (TNRCC) confirms the benefits of teleworking. Of
the teleworkers:
* 81% had average productivity increases of 18%
* 81% had increased morale
* More than 30% said their desire to look for a different job
decreased; 52% stayed the same
* 55% felt their work stress decreased
* 48% felt their home stress decreased
Two books for managers
Bill Fenton and Sharon Hill's new book, Implementing and Managing
Telework: a Guide for Those Who Make It Happen, provides managers with
a comprehensive review of telework programs of all kinds. The guide is
rich in details of successful strategies other managers have used to
implement their programs. Providing a wealth of examples, facts and
figures, it's a valuable reference for responding when your boss asks "How
do you know teleworking will work?"
Gina Vega, author of Managing Teleworkers and Telecommuting Strategies,
puts telework into context. As she so aptly points out "Telework is
not an endeavor per se; rather it is the embodiment of a philosophical and
humanistic movement." She probes the literature to highlight issues
that managers and workers must address if both are to succeed in the
developing eWork, information age.
2003
Two September conferences looked at the future of telework:
ITAC, the International Teleworking Association and Council,
celebrated its 10th anniversary at its annual conference in Baltimore. "Lessons
from the Past Empowering the Future" assessed how telework has
evolved and where it is going along with practical information on
organizational continuity, virtual collaboration and critical trends in
the workforce. Joanne Pratt announced new 2003 counts of teleworkers by
The Dieringer Group and discussed
long-term teleworking trends. There are now 23.5 million employee
teleworkers, up 40% from 2001. Being online with broadband makes it easy
to work at home.
Teleworking Comes of Age with Broadband, Pratt's new Telework
America research for ITAC, found that yes, broadband does make a
difference! Compared with teleworking using dialup, broadband improves
virtual teamwork, increases employee telework participation, promotes home
office technology and reduces employer costs. See the news
release and Power Point presentation, listen to the press conference
or read the Executive
Summary.
ACT, the Association for Commuter Transportation, met in Salt Lake
City, with the conference theme "Lighting
the Way: Transportation Alternatives for the Future." Joanne
Pratt presented data which documents the role of technology in making a
successful program. Proceedings from the conference will be available soon
from ACT.
2002
The 2nd Annual Telework Conference was held in January in conjunction with the Call Center Demo & Conference. I was struck by the widespread interest in teleworking for call center operations. During the
Best Practices of Successful Teleworking Programs that I moderated, panelists from Cisco, Corning and HP stressed the business case for telework--both internally, for its own employees, and externally, as a potential market for products and services. At all three companies, teleworking is well integrated into the corporate culture. For details see my notes on the Dallas conference and the September eWork conference held in Paris.
The Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration has released Joanne Pratt's latest research in a report titled
E-Biz.com: Strategies for Small Business
Success. Unlike the so-called “dot.coms,” 65 percent of small niche firms make a profit or cover the costs of their web sites. The low cost of a website plus the power of the keyword search gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to operate a small business that can support the lifestyle they prefer. See New Research Highlights for the Press Release and the SBA Office of Advocacy website for the
full report.
Pratt spoke at eWork in Europe 2002 on September 25th. The ninth European Assembly on Telework, held in Paris, once again reflected striking differences I observe each time I work in Europe. In the U.S. telework is a transportation issue. We have pioneered telework largely as a way to mitigate traffic and achieve cleaner air. Europeans consider e-work a labor issue, essential for economic development.
For example, at the eWork conference opening addresses were given by representatives of the Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development, by the Ministry for Social Affairs, Work and Solidarity and by the Director General for Employment and Social Affairs of the European Commission.
Breakout sessions included eWork and Competitiveness, eWork, Legislation and Industrial Relations, and eWork and Social Responsibility. To further make my case, meetings were held at the French Ministry of Labor and the Mayor of Paris hosted a gala dinner in the Hotel de Ville (city hall). Many of the participants were representatives of trade unions or local officials. For instance, a large group from the Western Isles of Scotland attended to promote “the new home for your business,” in an effort to halt the decline in population of the Hebrides.
My subject was From survey to real figures: how to identify and count teleworkers in a
country.
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