Few US workers who could telecommute do so: study

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One-quarter of the U.S. work force could be doing their jobs from home if all those able to telecommute chose to do so, according to a study on Wednesday which said many still elect to work at the office.

All those people working from home could translate into annual gasoline savings of $3.9 billion, according to the National Technology Readiness Survey.

The study found that 2 percent of U.S. workers telecommute full-time and another 9 percent do so part-time.

But another 14 percent of workers have the option of telecommuting, or have jobs conducive to the practice but choose not to, the study found.

The numbers suggest that many people would rather work at the office even if their job allowed telecommuting, said Professor P.K. Kannan, of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, which sponsored the study with Rockbridge Associates Inc., a Great Falls, Virginia research firm.

"That seems to suggest that even if employers were to say tomorrow that everybody had the option of telecommuting and you would save a lot of gas, that's not going to happen," Kannan said.

People still have good reasons to go to the office.

"An hypothesis could be that people still need the 'face time' with their bosses," he said. "Another thing is people miss the social interaction, just being at home." And with a median one-way commute of 10 miles and a median one-way commute time of 20 minutes, the daily trip for many workers is not that bad, he added.

"People actually prefer to go in, even though they have the option of telecommuting," he said.

Of those who can already telecommute, most do so only one, two or three days per week, the study found.

The study arrived at its estimate of possible savings of $3.9 billion by assuming that all those with the potential to telecommute did so 1.6 days a week.

The annual study was based on a random sample of 1,015 U.S. adults. Half were surveyed by telephone in December and half were surveyed online in February, and the margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Source:
By Ellen Wulfhorst
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