Georgia Telework Week is August 23-27, 2010. The content and views expressed in this blog post are those of Kate Lister, a telework consulting professional, and not necessarily those of The Clean Air Campaign.

If the 1.3 million Georgia employees who want to work from home and hold telework compatible jobs teleworked just half the time, the overall economic impact would total almost $20 billion a year! Participating businesses could add over $10,000 per employee to their bottom lines.

Less than 3% of Georgia employees (about 115,000) consider home their primary place of work, but studies show that 40% hold jobs that are compatible with telework and 79% would do so if allowed. If they did, just half the time (roughly the national average for those who do):

Georgia Businesses could:

- Increase productivity by over $7 billion a year—the equivalent of 170,000 man years of work
- Save $3.8 billion in real estate, electricity, and related costs
- Save $1.4 billion in absenteeism
- Save $1 billion in employee turnover
- Reduce ADA compliance costs
- Potentially reduce healthcare premiums

Georgia Employees could:

- Enjoy a better work-life balance
- Recoup 2-3 weeks of free time per year—time they’d have otherwise spent commuting
- Save $2,000-$7,000/year—the combination of transportation and other work-related costs
- Save $608 million at the pumps
- Potentially qualify for a home office tax credit, reduce childcare or eldercare costs, and lower vehicle insurance premiums

The State could:

- Save 8.8 million barrels of oil—equivalent to over 30% of the Country's annual imports from Libya
- Reduce greenhouse gases by 1.6 million tons/year—equivalent to taking almost 300,000 cars off the road
- Reduce road travel by 3.5 billion miles/year saving $60 million in unreimbursed road maintenance
- Save almost 3,000 people from traffic-related injury or death and $357 million in related costs.
Georgia's commitment to telework is something its citizens should be very proud of. Only a handful of states offer economic incentives and free assistance for companies that want to start their own telework programs.

About Kate Lister

Kate is a principal at the TeleworkResearchNetwork, a research and consulting firm that has synthesized over 250 case studies, scholarly reviews, research papers, books, and other documents on telecommuting and related topics. Their research has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and dozens of other publications. Their popular press book, Undress For Success—The Naked Truth About Working At Home (Wiley 2009) is aimed at empowering employees to negotiate, find, or create their own home-based work. It has won the praise of top telework and worklife advocates including WorldatWork, the Canadian Telework Association, the Telework Coalition, the Sloan Foundation, and the father of telecommuting, Jack Nilles.

Using the latest Census data, and assumptions from dozens of government and private sector sources, they've developed a model to quantify the economic, environmental, and societal potential on telecommuting for every, city, county, Congressional District, and state in the nation. It's been used by company and community leaders throughout the U.S. and Canada and is available free on the web along with a model that allows companies to quantify their own potential telecommuting savings. Customized models, based on over two dozen parameters, are available to evaluate unique community and company situations.

More about telecommuting, the pros and cons, who's doing it, and other resources for companies, individuals and researchers are available at TeleworkResearchNetwork.com.