Photo by Louis Hall

I’m fortunate to currently work for a company that allows—and encourages when possible—telecommuting. Although the documented advantages of telecommuting are numerous, throughout my career I have worked for organizations that didn’t recognize the advantages of telecommuting or simply wouldn’t allow employees to telecommute. Before PGi, before my ten years in advertising, I taught college English. As a teacher, my workday was filled with classroom lectures and a heavy schedule of office hours. While I felt it was essential to establish maximum face time with my students, I nevertheless consciously chose to separate my work from my home.

When I left academia and began my advertising career, I felt that that, regardless of the agency, meeting with creative and account service teams in person was critical to my work. It was my opinion that effective collaboration could only occur in person and on a daily basis. I felt compelled to be in the office every day, often 10-12 hours or more. My work-life balance suffered greatly because I wasn’t sure how to detach from the daily, habitual, face-to-face participation with my co-workers and my team. When I left my previous agency and found PGi, I retained these old habits. With so many telecommuting tools at hand—including both web and video conferencing—I recognized that I had the means at hand, but I didn’t know how to use them advantageously. PGi products serve the behavior, but why was I not telecommuting more?

Presently, I do telecommute but only occasionally, as do most telecommuters. According to the Mobility Choice Coalition, only 5.2 million employees were telecommuting two or more days a week during the time of the survey (2009). Today, an estimated 17.2 million Americans work from home or some other remote location at least one day a month. However, the future of telecommuting is not promising. In 2006, 77% of the nation’s 28.7 million telecommuters worked out of the employer’s office at least one day a week. In 2008, that percentage fell to 72%. Meanwhile, regular telecommuters who worked from home almost every day fell from 51% to 40% in the same year.

In the past, life’s haphazard circumstances or emergencies most often necessitated telecommuting, as opposed to today’s progressive approach to sustainability and the crunch of gas prices. There are any number of formulas that create the need to work from home:

• Waiting for the [insert plumber/electrician/cable guy]
• Sick [insert child/husband/wife/significant other/elder parent]
• [insert child/husband/wife/significant other/elder parent] has the day off from [insert school/work/organization] and I don’t

And yet, citing recruitment and employee satisfaction benefits, companies are changing their perspectives and policies regarding telecommuting employees; many have adopted the arrangement at least part-time. In fact, 37% of the employees in the CEA survey state that they were willing to take a slight pay cut (of up to 10%) if allowed this option.

So why not practice telecommuting regularly? The desire to be physically present in the work place and to have access to the available tools is significant. Undoubtedly there are days when I need to come into the office, when I enjoy my team and the amazing creativity of impromptu brainstorming sessions. I know I would miss such live interactions when working from home. But what might I gain?

That is what I want to discover. On this Earth Day, PGi and iMeet will be in the lobby of Atlanta’s Terminus building, talking to consumers about the green benefits of our products, demonstrating how they empower them to telecommute and to work from home while remaining engaged with their co-workers and fully interactive. And to celebrate this Earth Day, I will begin the commitment to telecommuting on a regular basis, two days a week to start. Let’s see how that goes.

Updates next month, both here and on the PGiGreen blog. Stay tuned and, if you have telecommuting tips to share, I’d love to hear from you.