Hot on the heels of our story on how entrenched mobile and home working has become (at least in the UK) comes a Gartner report on the closely allied topic of the 'virtual' office - in fact it's more or less the same thing.
The analyst firm points out that while teleworking programs are getting extra gloss as initiatives for reducing an organisation's carbon footprint, establishing a successful program still requires careful planning to ensure employee support and to allay 'loss-of-control fears' amongst managers.
According to Gartner, 41.4 million corporate employees globally are expected to spend at least one day a week in 2008 working from home - all of them both increasing productivity by reducing travel time while at the same time eliminating the emissions caused by transportation used to get to the office.
BritishTelecom , for example, has over 13,000 home-based employees, who work at home an average of 2.1 days per week. This helps to reduce the operator’s travel-related CO2 emissions by 3,663 tonnes per year, equivalent to 0.5% of its total emission for 2007.
“Once a company decides to transition from a traditional physical office environment to a virtual one, a business case should be prepared that presents potential benefits for both the enterprise and its employees,” said Andrew Walker, research director forGartner CIO Research Group. “Most enterprises don’t have a formal plan for virtual office environments and usually support the concept on an adhoc basis, mostly at manager discretion.
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