Gartner estimates that more than 80 million workers worldwide worked from home at least one day per month in 2005, up from 38 million in 2000.
In the United States, by far the world’s leader in telecommuting, almost a quarter of all corporate workers telecommuted one day a month in 2005, twice the number from 2000 — these figures don’t even include regular road warriors or self-employed people.
But here’s the bad news: Gartner expects the growth of telecommuting to slow, from 12 percent — worldwide and in the United States — in 2005 to 5.5 percent worldwide and 3.7 percent in the United States by 2008.
Apparently, there was a telecommuting surge post-September 11, which is now petering out; this despite the increase in broadband penetration and telecommuting-friendly technologies such as software VPNs, secure Web apps, and VoIP, and despite the rise of performance management and dashboard-driven cultures — which in theory should create meritocracies less dependent on water-cooler schmoozing.
So what gives? In my opinion, it’s good old human nature — that gut feeling managers have that most people will slack off away from the office, without adult supervision. While this is certainly true in my case, many people do find ways to be productive outside the office. I heard, for example, that actor Ben Stiller sometimes takes the most expensive hotel room he can find to guilt himself into productivity.
Linus Torvald presumably got Linux started from …arrrrrhhhh, home ??
Filed under: Opinion
