titovailona | Twenty20

elecommuting is becoming more prevalent, driven by technological advances, changing family dynamics, health concerns, and other factors. Also referred to as teleworking and remote working, telecommuting is a flexible arrangement that enables employees to avoid commuting or traveling to a central place of work, such as an office building, warehouse, or store. Instead, they work—completely or partially—from home or another off-site location.

According to the Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey, 4.7 million Americans regularly work from home, up 173 percent since 2005. This group—which does not include the self-employed population—works from home at least half the time and represents roughly 3 percent of the workforce.

Forty percent more US companies offered remote work as an option in 2018 than they did five years ago, according to research-based consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics. And the growth in telecommuting has taken place ten times faster than in other fields of work. That’s a testament to how increasingly popular remote work is becoming.

Telecommuting is taking place across almost every industry, according to Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics. Many people have jobs that involve sitting in front of a keyboard, using a phone, and other tasks that easily can be done remotely. Telecommuting is especially popular in the technology and healthcare fields, as well as with certain geographic regions and ages. “We are seeing trends more toward rural areas and with millennials who are starting to have children and are wanting to move out of the more urban environments,” says Lister.

Age wise, telecommuting is more common among employees above the age of 35 and Baby Boomers, according to Global Workplace Analytics. The average telecommuter is 46 or older, has a bachelor’s degree, and earns a higher median salary than an in-office worker. And roughly the same population of women and men telecommute.

So what’s fueling the growth of telecommuting? Most recently the coronavirus, specifically COVID-19, is driving much of the increase, Lister says. Health officials, physicians, as well as city and state leaders are encouraging companies to allow employees to work from home whenever possible to minimize the spread of the disease in the workplace. The Society for Human Resource Management issued a statement recommending employers consider the following preventive measures: “Actively encourage sick employees to stay home, send symptomatic employees home until they are able to return to work safely, and require employees returning from high-risk areas to telework during the incubation period.”

Historically, the top drivers for remote work have fluctuated over the years based on the circumstances. “During the recession, it was saving money,” Lister explains. “Right now, it’s attracting and retaining talent. In some countries, sustainability leads the charge. After a crisis, it’s resilience and disaster preparedness.”

However, the best telecommuting outcomes, Lister says, can be achieved among companies that approach remote work as a strategic initiative and involve all functional units in its implementation, such as human resources, IT, finance, and marketing. “Training is key,” she says. “Rather than letting it happen, organizations need to make it happen.”

Increasingly, organizations are taking steps toward remote work in Alaska, although not quite as much as in the Lower 48. “The numbers show 2.3 percent of employees (7,426) work at home half time or more,” Lister says. “This is lower than the national average of 3.4 percent.”

However, telecommuting is on the rise in Alaska, says Paula Bradison, president and CEO of Alaska Executive Search (AES), a full-service recruiting and staffing firm. This is especially true for the medical industry, where telemedicine is increasingly filling a void in the state’s more isolated areas. Advancements in technology are making it easier for physicians and other professionals to deliver services remotely. “We’re seeing more job offers where people have the flexibility to be off site,” Bradison says.

Still, Bradison suspects there is less telecommuting happening in Alaska than elsewhere due, in part, to the state’s strong natural resource development and military presence. She explains, “They are more hands-on type jobs that you can’t do from a remote place.”

Plus, many of Alaska’s employers want to know that Alaskans are putting Alaskans to work. And this may be impacting the growth of telecommuting in Alaska. “The idea of someone who’s telecommuting is often not as appealing as hiring someone who’s in Alaska,” she says.

However, telecommuting works for AES, which has employees who have relocated to Germany, Texas, California, and Arizona. “Instead of trying to find someone to replace them, with their expertise, we’ve modified the job.”

To make these arrangements work, AES uses a “blended” approach, Bradison says. Each morning, the company conducts a team meeting using a Microsoft 365 collaboration tool. It also flies staff members to Alaska each month on a rotating basis to engage in face-to-face communications with other employees and clients.

It can be difficult to find talent in Alaska, says Todd Saunders, president and CEO of AKHIRE. That’s why his company allows employees to telecommute. Depending on the position, AKHIRE generally lets its staff spend one third of their time working from home, a third on the road, and a third in the office. Facilitating remote work is an important part of providing a competitive employee benefits package at AKHIRE. “I don’t have the ability to offer huge salaries,” Saunders says. “Telecommuting allows smaller companies to get good quality people and offer them other benefits.”

Alaska Communications, which provides IT management and business solutions, employs remote workers and encourages telecommuting for its office-based employees when necessary. Telecommuting workers represent various areas of the Anchorage-based telecommunications company, such as information technology, sales, and contact center operations.

For example, Alaska Communications’ consumer and small business contact center has remote workers who seamlessly serve customers from locations around the state, including Homer, Sitka, and Fairbanks. “Working remote is an earned privilege for high performers, and I’ve found it yields higher productivity,” says Jeana Tye, senior manager of mass market service delivery at Alaska Communications. “My remote workers are strong individual contributors and working from home allows them to bring out strengths and qualities within themselves to perform at a higher level. We’re fortunate that the VOIP [voice over internet protocol] technology we use to answer customer calls only requires an internet connection, allowing flexibility for our office workers who may need to occasionally work from home due to weather or personal reasons.”

Tye emphasizes the importance making sure remote workers feel included. “Typically, remote workers are high performers and don’t need a lot of check-ins on their job tasks; it’s more about making them feel connected to the rest of the team,” she says. “For example, if I order lunch for my team in Anchorage, I also order lunch for our remote workers.”

Considering the benefits it provides to both employees and employers, the appeal of telecommuting is understandable. For workers, telecommuting offers a flexible schedule, enhances productivity, and creates greater work-life balance. It also results in a more satisfying work environment overall. People who work remotely at least once a month are 24 percent more likely to be happy and productive, according to smallbizgenius, a digital community for small business owners.

For employers, remote workers help reduce overhead and operating expenses. These are automatic cost savings because employers don’t have to invest as much in office space, pay electricity bills, or buy as much equipment. In addition, employees who regularly work remotely stay with their companies longer than onsite employees. Remote workers say they are likely to stay in their current job for the next five years, 13 percent longer than onsite workers, according to the 2019 State of Remote Work report by video conferencing company Owl Labs. And companies that allow remote work report 25 percent lower employee turnover than those that don’t, according to Owl Labs.

Another important but often overlooked telecommuting benefit is that it promotes business continuity. This can be crucial in Alaska, where geography, weather, and infrastructure can be problematic. “With our limited road system and prevalence for natural disasters, having employees located in various locations can prove critical to continuing operations,” says Jim Gutcher, vice president of strategy and product management at Alaska Communications. “If an earthquake occurs in Anchorage and knocks out power or other connectivity services, employees in other locations, whether inside or outside Alaska, may continue business as usual. Or, when a highway is unexpectedly closed, workers are empowered to turn around and head home to continue working. Once you have technology and policies in place to support remote workers, you’ve augmented your business continuity plan.”

In fact, business continuity is one of the primary reasons Alaska Communications implemented a remote worker program in its contact center, Tye says. “If a natural disaster were to impact our main contact center in Anchorage, we’d still have employees with the ability to answer customer calls,” she explains. “Additionally, if something were to happen to our Anchorage office, rendering it unsafe or unusable for business operations, my employees could easily work from home to serve our customers.”

Telecommuting can be especially advantageous in Alaska, where the state’s massive size makes it difficult for businesses to be everywhere. Alaska’s remoteness also makes it harder for companies to cover all the populated regions with multiple offices, Saunders says. But allowing workers to telecommute gives companies the ability to cover more areas with less overhead.

However, Saunders points out that the need for an office or face-to-face networking doesn’t go completely away with telecommuting. And one of the negative sides of telecommuting is the loss of personal connection from not having human interaction. He says: “Having someone in front of you is so much better than on a computer screen… Even though you can get a lot done on the phone, there’s value in meeting people and having a personal connection.”

Telecommuting has its challenges, Bradison agrees. And it requires collaboration, cooperation, and adherence to the corporate culture for remote working to be effective. “It’s really important to have clearly-defined expectations, so everybody is on the same page of what success looks like,” she says.

Technology is a crucial component for working from home. At the bare minimum, a computer and reliable internet connection are required, Gutcher says. However, particular technological requirements depend on the nature of the work.

To Gutcher, telecommuting workers fall into three categories: occasional, nomadic, and remote. The occasional category would include employees who typically work in the office but need to work from home because they have a sick child. Nomadic employees might be salespeople or workers who travel and spend a lot of time on the road but are still based out of an office location. And remote workers are employees who work remotely full time.

So who covers the cost of the technology being used by a company’s remote workers? It depends on the work being performed and company policy. “While all of these remote workers can utilize the same basic technology, their employer’s investment in their technology portfolio may change based on how often they work remotely,” Gutcher says. “For example, the investment for an occasional worker, someone who may work from home only a handful of days per year, might look different than the investment made in someone who works remote 100 percent of the time.”

Aside from a computer and reliable internet connection, added applications can augment a remote worker’s connection and productivity, says Cindy Christopher, Alaska Communications’ director of managed IT. Tools like Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, cloud applications, soft client, Dropbox, WebEx, Skype for Business, Zoom, and VOIP phone services can be great help when it comes to collaboration and productivity. Another important aspect of remote work is access through a virtual private network with a strong firewall.

At AES, modern technology not only facilitates remote work, but allows staff to work more efficiently in the office. “We rely on Microsoft products because it allows a level of security and affordability that we cannot get on our own,” Bradison says.

For AKHIRE, tools like Skype, FaceTime, and Google make it easy for staff to video chat with clients when they’re not in the company’s Anchorage or Juneau offices. High-speed internet and the latest smartphones give employees much more flexibility and capacity to work from the comfort of home. “There’s so much more you can do now without anyone knowing that you’re not sitting in an office,” Saunders says. “But there’s a drawback. It allows you to get sucked into work even on your down time.”