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• What is it
  • Why it was created
  • What we mean by ways2work
  • What it does
  • Who it's for
  • How to use it
  • The people behind it
  • Who has contributed
• Why do it
  • Reduce costs, improve resource efficiency
  • Reduce absence, improve productivity
  • Reduce carbon emissions, improve your reputation
• How to do it
  • Re-thinking commuting
  • Re-thinking business travel
  • Measuring and monitoring carbon impacts
  • Creating your ways2work plan
  • Creating a healthy workplace
• Who does it
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• Re-thinking commuting
  • Commuting basics
  • What we could do differently
  • Reducing commuting through ICT
    • Terms people use for teleworking: Glossary
    • Benefits of teleworking
      • Benefits to environment
      • Benefits to employees
      • Benefits to managers and organisations
    • Suitable organisations
    • Suitable persons
    • Issues to be overcome
    • Where can telework be carried out?
    • Essential steps to creating teleworking
    • Unintended consequences of teleworking?
• Re-thinking business travel
• Measuring and monitoring carbon impacts
• Creating your ways2work plan
• Creating a healthy workplace

Benefits to employees

A 2008 UK investigation by the Department for Transport asked 50 people who teleworked why they did so and found the following three reasons.

• Tasks can be performed better at home
  the home environment is quieter than the office and there are fewer distractions and interruptions. Teleworkers can concentrate better on tasks requiring focused attention
• Eliminating or time-shifting commuting journeys
  teleworkers who work whole days at home can avoid the stress, drudgery, cost and time spent travelling to work. The survey also found teleworkers who worked part-days from home to avoid travelling in the rush hour
• More opportunity for caring and a fit with personal preferences
  teleworking allows parents to have more time with their children and take them to and from school, nursery, etc. Teleworking also allows a range of other caring responsibilities to be fulfilled. Finally working at home can, for some, be more pleasant than working in the office because the home is a more relaxed and comfortable workplace.

These three reasons are consistent with a larger survey of teleworkers which found the top five reasons for working from home were:

(a) tasks can be done better from home

(b) working at home made time for personal business

(c) it meant reduced travel time

(d) people preferred working from home

(e) they could spend more time with their family and undertake child care

Note that in these two surveys, higher performance at home ranks highly. While people appreciate teleworking's ease and fit with their personal circumstances, the principal motivator is to be more productive.

Further benefits for employees are related to their careers.

• Teleworking lets them experience the pattern of more autonomous, technologically-enabled, remote and mobile working that many predict will be the shape of knowledge-based work of the future
   
• Teleworking skills allow them to seek work in geographic areas further afield than they could commute to

Creating your ways2work action plan
Ready to implement travel and work planning into your organisation? See how in...