Alternative energies are explored, solar panels are becoming all the rage and adopting renewable and sustainable technologies is quickly trending, but what about good ol' fashion telecommuting?
It’s not at all to say that these other green jobs shouldn’t get the attention that they are, but telecommuting has been seriously overlooked in efforts to bring green jobs to the masses. For example, here is some compelling data from Undress4success.com’s Pros & Cons of Telecommuting report:
Research shows that 40 percent of U.S. employees could work from home, at least some of the time (some studies put that figure at 50-70 percent), and two-thirds of employees want to. If they actually did, just half of the time (roughly the national average), they would:
- Save almost 9 billion gallons of gas and $31 billion/year at the pumps—or 453 million barrels of oil, the equivalent of 57 percent of our Gulf Oil imports.
- Eliminate 84 million tons of CO2—the principal greenhouse gas—the equivalent of taking 15 million cars off the road. And even more carbon footprint savings come from reduced office energy, roadway repairs, urban heating, office construction, business travel, and paper usage.
- Increase productivity by 6.2 million man-hours/year—representing a value of $201 billion.
Not to mention…
Reduce the wear and tear on our highways by 180 billion miles per year and roadway maintenance costs by $3 billion.
- Save almost 2,500 lives and prevent almost 150,000 traffic injuries—representing a savings of over $18 billion/year in direct and indirect accident costs.
- Save companies up to $194 billion a year in real estate, electricity, absenteeism, and turnover.
- Save employees between $2,500 and $11,000/year by reducing commuting and other office-related costs. Cumulatively, that’s an economic boost of between $125 billion and $550 billion a year.
In fact, for many career fields, what quite possibly could be the easiest change to implement benefits the environmental, economic, social, health/medical, and even public safety perspectives.
Of course, changes on a grand scale can't be done in a blink of an eye and certainly carry their own challenges, but the simple facts are:
- that the majority of people want to have telecommuting as an option, maybe even need it in order to find some semblance of work-life balance;
- the technology is here, readily accessible, and generally affordable;
- there are economic benefits for the employer, the employee, and our national transportation infrastructure (not to mention the emergency or pandemic preparedness benefits);
- and then there are the abundant environmental benefits that should define what a green job is and accomplishes!
It’s time for business leaders and policy makers to include telecommuting more actively in the dialogue of green jobs.
Sara Sutton Fell is an expert in the online job market with 15 years of experience. Sara is the CEO/Founder of FlexJobs, the leading career website for telecommuting and flexible job listings, and her first business, JobDirect, was sold to Korn|Ferry International in 2001.
Edited by
Stefania Viscusi
