Good wireline Internet connectivity becoming a job requirement

One clear indication of the role good Internet connectivity plays in the economy is starting to show up in job postings. This telecommute position with Aetna, for example, states the following job requirements:

Minimum internet requirements for a telecommuting position include:
· A separate wired Internet connection
· Minimum download speed of 6MB
· Minimum upload speed of 1MB
· Satellite and other wireless Internet are NOT supported

The distributed workplace: A new model for the Internet economy

In this white paper, Michael Shear, president of the Washington, DC-based Broadband Planning Initiative, posits a meta shift is at hand as the economy increasingly becomes knowledge and information-based. That shift heralds the obsolescence of the centralized office building and the massive transportation infrastructure that serves it, accompanied by the expansion of Information and Telecommunications infrastructure (ICT). The expansion of ICT infrastructure in turn enables what Shear describes as the distributed workplace in which people will work in the communities where they live rather than leading a bifurcated existence most days between their work location and community of residence.

Shear's distributed workplace entails community work centers containing multiple suites with each suite serving 15-50 workers from one company or agency. With a dozen or more tenant organizations, Shear writes, each work center could support 150 to 1000 employees. "Employees will have the capability to work for major business and government employers around the metropolitan or regional area from a networked work center located in their communities," Shear notes, enhancing the quality of their lives and their communities. He adds his distributed workplace model "takes advantage of the changing nature of work and balances deployment with security and management oversight while enhancing economic growth and competitiveness."

Shear's concept is decidedly progressive and tinted green in that it reduces wasteful commuting and its enormous personal, economic and environmental cost burdens. For big government towns such as Washington and Sacramento where government agencies have adopted but struggled over the years to implement telework policies, the distributed workplace could provide a way to break the logjam and move forward.

Another major potential beneficiary of Shear's new way of working is the commercial real estate industry. The economic downturn has created numerous vacant properties of various sizes ranging from small storefronts to large auto dealerships that could function as distributed workplace sites.

Increased adoption of telework offers low cost means of alleviating California's transportation congestion

Dan Walters: Study of exodus from California doesn't prove its point - Dan Walters - The Sacramento Bee: [t]here are legitimate doubts about California's ability to attract the job-creating investment capital we need to emerge from recession because of the aforementioned regulatory climate, high taxes and other factors, such as poor-performing schools and congested transportation. (Emphasis added)

California's transportation congestion problem has a low cost means of mitigation: increased adoption of working from a home office -- known as telework -- that eliminates commute trips and peak hour traffic.  A U.S. Census Bureau report issued earlier this month suggests that's the trend.  According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the number of people who worked at home at least one day per week increased from 9.5 million in 1999 to 13.4 million in 2010, increasing from 7.0 percent to 9.5 percent of all workers. The largest increase occurred between 2005 and 2010, when the share grew from 7.8 percent to 9.5 percent of all workers, an increase of more than 2 million.

As home to Silicon Valley and companies that have innovated telecommunications and information technologies that make remote work and virtual organizations possible, the Golden State should lead the way on telework adoption. Especially since raising billions to maintain its aging, decades-old system of roads and highways is proving fiscally challenging.

The great paradox of Silicon Valley traffic

This item from Silicon Valley's Mercury News reporting on increased traffic congestion as a propitious sign the economy is picking up speed is thick with irony. An excerpt:

Santa Clara County's busiest bottleneck -- where Highway 101 splits Interstates 280 and 680 -- featured more vehicles in 2011 than ever during an average day, according to Caltrans data. The most heavily traveled stretch on the Peninsula, Highway 101 in San Mateo, set a record last year for rush hour vehicle counts after an extra traffic lane was added to meet the demand.

The irony?  Over the past three decades, Silicon Valley companies revolutionized information technology that makes it possible to work and conduct most business remotely from most anywhere and at any time without the need to commute to a central office during set time schedules, feeding the burgeoning "rush hour" traffic.  Yet thousands of people are working as if none of it ever happened and it's still 1975. 

Authors William A. Draves and Julie Coats provide an explanation in their 2004 book Nine Shift.  Silicon Valley invented what they term the Internet Age.  But that invention was produced by Industrial Age companies.  They predict suburbs and commuting -- vestiges of the Industrial Age -- will go into decline during the first two decades of the 21st century, mirroring a two-decade-long shift from a primarily agrarian society to an industrial one during the first 20 years of the 20th century.

Magazine - Why Women Still Can’t Have It All - The Atlantic

Being able to work from home—in the evening after children are put to bed, or during their sick days or snow days, and at least some of the time on weekends—can be the key, for mothers, to carrying your full load versus letting a team down at crucial moments. State-of-the-art videoconferencing facilities can dramatically reduce the need for long business trips. These technologies are making inroads, and allowing easier integration of work and family life. According to the Women’s Business Center, 61 percent of women business owners use technology to “integrate the responsibilities of work and home”; 44 percent use technology to allow employees “to work off-site or to have flexible work schedules.” Yet our work culture still remains more office-centered than it needs to be, especially in light of technological advances.  (Emphasis added)

Indeed it does.  Anne-Marie Slaughter's piece in the July/August issue of The Atlantic points up how the Internet is making the office as we know it obsolete. But the Internet notwithstanding, the 1950s office culture still predominates, forcing women into the unfortunate and now unnecessary circumstance of having to choose between their professional lives and parenthood.

It's still 1985: California state offices stuck in pre-Internet management mode

While riding in a cab in downtown Sacramento this week — the daily commute destination of thousands of State of California employees — the usual topics of weather and traffic came up.  The driver offered his solution to traffic congestion: rather than commute to work, state employees should stay off the roads and work remotely from home offices.  After all, the cabbie pointed out, the technology allowing them to do so has been in place for many years.  They can get their work done on a computer from home just as easily as their office.  So why aren’t more state employees teleworking, he asked?

The explanation appears in a January 2008 white paper prepared by a group of state employees, the Statewide Work Anywhere Team (SWAT).  The paper notes use of information technology “is uniquely positioned to further the state’s ‘Green initiatives’ by contributing solutions for larger issues facing California: traffic congestion, dependence on oil, air pollution, and quality of life to name a few. It is possible to perform work from virtually anywhere. We can do business better. Work Anywhere provides one viable option that we should fully explore.”  It adds, “[w]orking from anywhere and using virtual teams are integral to the success of today’s workforce” and recommends “the State of California initiate a statewide standard for expanding the concept into its work environment.”

So why hasn’t the state more widely adopted telework four years after the paper was issued?  Despite the bulk of the work being white collar, information and knowledge work, a blue collar shop floor management by observation culture dominates.  The paper explains:

Many program area managers and executives are hesitant to implement Work Anywhere strategies/policies due to concerns regarding monitoring staff productivity and the staff’s ability to perform their duties effectively from a remote site (usually their home) without immediate access to other workers. Additionally, there is concern on monitoring staff that under-perform. The main challenges mentioned by all contacted in the study were the importance of determining the types of duties that are easily measurable and candidate selection requirements for performing tasks that could be part of a Work Anywhere plan. The most often stated concern was how to quickly manage employees that are out of sight. Some of the examples of telecommuting floundered because they lacked executive sponsorship, clear performance measurements or procedures for implementation of the policies. Additionally, some of the managers indicated an interest in receiving additional training for developing skills to better manage employees who work away from the main office.

That remains the case today.  In September 2011, the then head of the Telework Advisory Group of California’s Department of General Services, Geoff McLennan, reported only about five percent out of a state workforce of about 240,000 telework.  More recent data would put the number even lower.  As older state workers retire in large numbers and as the economy slowly recovers, younger workers accustomed to being connected to the Internet from anywhere aren’t likely going to find state employment and its pre-Internet, 1980s office culture an attractive option.   

Better telecom infrastructure, increased telework adoption would boost suburban home values

This U.S. News and World Report article suggests a big problem with the U.S. housing market is overbuilt suburbs that are incompatible with work. Homes located in the burbs are less desirable because they are far from jobs, requiring costly commutes. Other workers aren't interested in buying suburban dwellings because they need to remain mobile to move among metro areas where job opportunities arise.

What the article doesn't mention is that these homes would be far more marketable if 1) They had fiber optic connections to the Internet and 2) More information and knowledge work (and video conferencing) was done in home offices instead of requiring lengthy commutes to a cubicle simply to use a different computer. Move bytes, not bodies.

Managing by eyeballing butts in chairs instead of work product comes with $900 billion lost opportunity cost

Despite the rapid growth of the digital economy and the Internet that makes the specific time and location for getting work done less and less relevant, "management attitudes that were born in the days of sweatshops and typing pools still dominate" the American workplace, according to a June 2011 paper authored by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish of the Telework Research Network.

It estimates that if 50 million potential telecommuters in the U.S. worked from home for half the work week, the savings to their employers, communities and themselves would would total over $900 billion annually. As framed by Lister and Harnish, that represents part of the lost opportunity cost of retaining the pre-digital economy management model.

The authors also call for ubiquitous Internet access. "Without uniform access, telework will not be available to those who need it the most," they state.

Attention Netflix: Coordinate your business model with office space

Netflix is running into local government opposition in Los Gatos, Calif. over its plans to build 550,000 square feet of office space in the town.

Netflix is transitioning its delivery platform away from DVDs delivered to customer's homes via postal mail to delivering movies over the Internet.

Why doesn't it do the same with its office space and use a distributed workforce working out of their homes and otherwise remotely instead of relying on a 1950s pre-Internet business model that requires its staff to work in central office buildings?

Despite growth of Internet telecommunications, majority of employers don't allow telework

We may be living in the era of Internet telecommunications where most any generation, analysis and manipulation of words and numbers can be done from most anywhere having adequate telecom infrastructure.

But for most American businesses, that fact hasn't yet fully registered. Most still believe this type of work can only be done in office buildings and cubicles, which in turn reinforces that time sucking activity known as commuting. At a time when people are strapped for time and want to reduce their carbon footprints. And exercise more and perhaps lower their employers' soaring health care costs in the process.

The results of a random telephone survey of nearly 10,000 businesses in a dozen states last year found only 23 percent allow telework. The results are reported in a white paper issued today by Connected Nation, Leveraging Technology to Stimulate Economic Growth.

Virtual workforce requires robust telecom infrastructure

While a recent survey found that less than 4 percent of U.S. private sector workers actually work from home, that figure could reach as high as 30 percent by 2019, according to TechCast, a George Washington University–based virtual think tank.

What's behind this coming workplace revolution? Quite simply, "work" no longer needs to be defined as a place you go. We're witnessing the emergence of a next generation workforce that is always-on and hyper-connected via broadband, with a proliferation of connected devices and access to on-the-go Internet-based applications and cloud-based services that make working from anywhere possible.

The above excerpt from a Reuters article goes on to point out various pluses of telework including reduced carbon emissions from less commuting and mutual benefits for employers (better productivity, lower office costs) and employees (greater work/life balance and job satisfaction). While not mentioned specifically, improved work/life balance could also yield big benefits in lower health care costs by freeing up time for exercise that would otherwise be spent commuting to and from the office.

In order for the virtual workforce to become a reality, workers will need advanced telecommunications infrastructure at their doorsteps that can support videoconferencing and other interactive applications. That means fiber optic connections offering symmetric upload and download speeds and scalability for future growth that is generally not offered by incumbent telco and cable companies.