Who can telework?

Telework initiatives deliver many benefits to employers. These benefits include financial savings, time savings and travel savings but before it is possible to estimate the scale of these savings, managers need to consider how many employees might be able to telework.

Although a range of case studies suggest that around 20 per cent of employees can telework effectively at least two days a week, you might like a more definitive estimate of the number of potential teleworkers within your organisation. To develop such an estimate the following calculation may be useful.

Establish a start point. How many employees work with information and knowledge or with off-site clients and colleagues for at least 40 per cent of the average week? Your answer to this question is figure A.

Accommodate the ‘reluctant’. Not all employees will embrace the concept of telework. They might not have appropriate space at home, they might not be able to work on their own or they might just prefer to come into the office everyday. Up to 40 per cent of employees could fall into this category.

Eliminate the impractical. There are three things that might make telework impractical for some roles: ‘immediacy’, specialised equipment and security. Employees who must always respond immediately to requests from colleagues or clients will find telework difficult. Employees who always need access to specialised workplace equipment (such as large photocopiers or printers) will also find telework difficult. Similarly, employees who frequently work with highly sensitive information might pose a risk if they were to telework.

How many of the employees included in figure A are performing roles with a high requirement for immediacy, specialised equipment or security? Your answer to this question is figure B.

Subtracting figure B from 60 per cent of figure A will give you a rough estimate of the total number of possible teleworkers in your organisation.

(As an example: for an insurance company with 200 staff figure A might be 170 and figure B might be 30. The total number of potential teleworkers would therefore be 72.)

Although most telework initiatives will start with a lower number of teleworkers, the above calculation will provide a rough estimate of the potential benefit once the telework initiative is fully established.