The role of telecommuting in an integrated workplace: the WorkSmart project

From the point of view of public agencies, telecommuting is an important tool for reducing the ever-increasing need for highways. Experience over many years shows that the supply problems of telecommuting are solved issues and that, where it was being used, telecommuting benefits exceed costs . However, despite these favorable results, telecommuting demand is increasing slowly. To understand this lag, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the San Bernardino Association of Governments (SANBAG) sponsored a major, multidisciplinary study to assess the demand for telecommuting. Unlike previous work which focused only on telecommuting, the study examined the way people now work in offices and investigated the many alternative new ways of working, in addition to telecorrunuting, which are being implemented. The approach was to conduct four case studies of knowledge-based organizations to estimate the effects that the new ways of working would have on them. Four Southern California organizations were studied: an advertising agency, a public accounting fm, a telephone provider, and a district office of Caltrans. The solution, a systems approach named WorkSmart, uses telecommuting as one of several tools to change the way people work. This paper describes the stttdy, summarizes its findings, and discusses the public policy implications which were found. The case studies are presented in terms of the challenges, the alternative solutions, and the recommendations which were made. Permission to make digitalhrd copies of all or part of this material for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for pmtit or commercial advantage, the copyright notice, the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copyright is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires specific permission and/or fee. SIGCPR/ SIGMIS ’96, Denver Colorado USA @ 1996 ACM o-89791-782-O/96/04. .$3.50 Introduction Telecommuting is one of many strategies being used by state and local agencies to satis~ the ever-increasing demand for local transportation. In the 20 years since the trailblazing book Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoffs: Options for Tomorrow (Nines et. al 1976) was published, the technology needed for telecomtnuting has become readily available. Yet, even though supply problem is a solved problem, few people telecommute. This paper, therefore, examines the demand side of telecommutingc It presents the result of a major multidisciplinary project sponsored by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the San Bernardino Association of Governments (SANBAG). The project resulted from a seeming failure. In 1991 the fwst TeleBusiness Work Centers were opened in the State of California, with initial support from local transportation commissions, the State, and the private sector. The Centers, which were demonstration projects that provided telecommuting facilities, were established in the Inland Empire region of Southern California with three clear motives: