After the passage of Rep. Danny Davis's telecommuting bill in the House yesterday, OhMyGov! decided to rummage through some statistics and determine if telecommuting is all it's cracked up to be.
What we found was indeed interesting. First, the basics; In a 2005 poll conducted by ABC News, The New York Times and the Washington Post, it was determined that the average round-trip commute for an employee is 32 miles.
If we use the statistic from the Environmental Protection Agency that the gas mileage for cars sold between 1997 and 2007 averaged 20 miles per gallon (mpg), then the average federal employee would save 1.6 gallons of gas for every day of telecommuting.
Assuming the person telecommuted one day a week for 48 weeks out of the year - this accounts for sick leave and vacations - that same person would save 76.8 gallons of gas a year, or $306 per annum at the current national average gas price of $3.983 per gallon.
The federal government employs 2.7 million workers, 89% (2.4 million) of whom work in white-collar jobs, according to the latest Federal Civilian Workforce Statistics Fact Book. If just half of those employees telecommuted once a week, the federal government would be responsible for saving 184,320,000 gallons of gas a year. In dollars, this amounts to $7.34 billion over a ten-year period. When these benefits are combined with the environmental benefits of eliminating thousands of pounds of air contaminants and greenhouse gases emitted from vehicles burning gasoline from entering the atmosphere, telecommuting seems to be worth the hoopla.
According to CDW Government, an IT solutions provider to the federal government, 17 percent (459,000) of federal employees telework. Unfortunately, the number conflicts with the latest report from the Office of Personnel Management entitled, The Status of Telework in the Federal Government, which states that in calendar year 2006, there were 110,592 employees teleworking in the Federal Government.
Regardless of who is reporting the correct numbers, the reality is more employees could be teleworking. There are three main impediments to broad adoption of teleworking policies in the government: supervisor reluctance, a lack of employee awareness about teleworking benefits, and security concerns.
According to Telework-Exchange, a public-private partnership focused on telework in government, forty-two percent of respondents are not aware if they are eligible to telework. Ninety percent of these respondents are, in fact, eligible to telework.
The No. 1 obstacle to instituting teleworking broadly across government is middle managers, Joseph Hungate, the Treasury Department's principal deputy inspector general for tax administration told Greener Computing News. Hungate went on to state that if middle managers are allowed to telework and are given the tools to manage their employees remotely, including metrics on employee productivity, they are more likely to embrace the concept rapidly.
"Managers need to get away from managing conduct and start managing product," he said.
Of course, not everyone is cut out for teleworking. Individuals who have a difficult time self-motivating might find their plasma TV particularly distracting. Teleworking also requires the proper equipment - those working on a dialup Internet connection won't be responding to emails from coworkers or their boss particularly quickly. Moreover, some agencies and offices don't allow remote access to email or files due to security reasons. And until productivity measurements are implemented throughout government workplaces more consistently, many will continue to worry that telecommuting will erode employee performance.