Telecommuting and the green office of the future

Businesses are becoming greener, not just because it is right, but because it makes sense.

Paul Marerro did not consciously try to start an environmentally conscious company. It happened naturally. Working out of a home office in Tampa, Florida, Marerro provides database and application enterprise designing, report writing and project management services.

As his company, Caaspre Consulting, LLC grew, he hired a full-time employee in Iowa and added contractors in Cincinnati and Florida. All had worked for Marerro before in traditional offices. But the time for traditional offices has passed, both for Marrero and for a growing number of companies.

"It's all telecommuting," Marerro says.

If he had more full-time employees, he would consider a virtual office, which would allow facilities such as a conference room and phone-answering service. But for now, he is happy, he says.

Marerro does not have much waste and while he cannot go totally paperless, waste paper is shredded and recycled. His business cards are made from recycled paper and all invoices are emailed. When he visits his largest client in Philadelphia, he walks or takes public transportation around the city.

"The green has worked its way in," Marerro claims. "We consume electricity but nowhere near the amount used by an office building. It is a room in your house."

Ideally, Marerro says, he would like to grow the business while expanding his green practices to include solar panels for his home and office. "But it is also nice to have several large clients, stay focused, provide quality and there should not be a lot of waste," he adds.

Real estate executives and facility managers at medium to large companies are sometimes way off when it comes to occupancy rates, says John Anderson, present and CEO of PeopleCube. Most think their facilities are being used 80 per cent or 90 per cent of the time. Upon tracking the data, they are often surprised to learn they are using their space less than 50 per cent of the time.

PeopleCube, based in Framingham, Massachusetts, provides resource and energy management technology for the workplace. Many of Anderson's 65 employees telecommute.

Anderson's office hotel software allows employees to schedule activities to secure a work space or room or office as needed. Some take it a step further. A large PeopleCube client in Charlotte, North Carolina, for instance, put up telecommuting offices around the perimeter of the city from which employees could work several days a week without commuting into the city.

The office and employer of the future invite employee participation and collaboration, which is key, Anderson predicts.

"You input your own carbon footprint. For example, you do not own a cubicle so you rent one for a day. You set the air conditioning and lighting as you like, contributing to the carbon offset," he says.

Facilities represent the second highest expense for large businesses and are the number one cause of emissions, according to Anderson. Many employers are paying too much to heat and cool conference rooms that are hardly used and to illuminate cubicles too often left empty. Allowing employees to telecommute from home at least part of the week could cut costs significantly.

Traditionally, tracking and analysing data from workflow patterns involves looking backward. Anderson suggests a mind shift that would require companies to establish baselines before demonstrating and measuring savings going forward.

Using the data more efficiently can help lower carbon footprints by reducing real estate costs and increasing energy efficiency by up to 30 per cent, he claims.

"You need to establish what your baselines are before you can demonstrate and measure savings going forward," Anderson advises. "Companies are just starting to do that today."

John Larson, a spokesman for Results-Only Working Environment (ROWE), a new way of managing people developed by two women who worked in human resources at Best Buy, remembers when a US Interstate Highway collapsed three blocks from where he worked in Minneapolis-St Paul in 2007. There was an immediate reaction by politicians and transportation officials who needed to reroute hundreds of thousands of vehicles every day. If these commuters' companies had put a telecommuting plan in place, that problem could potentially have been solved almost instantly.

The idea of ROWE is to allow flexible schedules, forcing managers to concentrate on outcomes rather than hours.

Best Buy adopted the ROWE plan at its headquarters, staggering arrival times for employees throughout the work day and cutting down on commute times.

"Of those 4,000 people in Best Buy, 2,500 to 3,000 still go to work each day but not all at the same time," Larson says. "People go at all hours so you do not have a giant crush of cars stalled in traffic."

Only a handful of companies have adopted this results-only philosophy. "But if ROWE became the status quo, it would have a tremendous impact on the environment," Larson adds.

PeopleCube's 65 employees book conference space and cubicles on an as-needed basis, telecommuting when they do not need to be in the office.

Telecommuting is a huge incentive, Anderson says. It helps employees balance work and home life. Not having to drive an hour or more each way sometimes results in employees spending that saved commute-time working.

"After the salary, the number-one attraction is telecommuting," he said. " You are now dealing with millennial kids exiting college and they are very environmentally conscious. Employees want to know that their company is driving in those directions. It is a recruiting strategy too."

Employee participation can sound like a scary proposition for the traditional office scenario. There are two schools of thought regarding control, according to Anderson: One is that employees are not going to help, so bosses have to force them to do what bosses want; the other is that the more employees are included in decision-making, the more they will help.

Educating employees about green office practices is vital, Anderson says.

"You would be surprised what the employee population is willing to do," he says. "People are more willing to pitch in if you incentivise them to participate."

Incentives include funding transportation if employees leave their cars at home, bringing a homey feel into the office by having living room-type setups or having a Starbucks in the building.

Some of the more radical changes in green offices of the future have to do with amenities-based interiors and designs based around increased productivity. Think laundry room at the office so you do not have to find one in your lunch hour.

Some banks, insurance and technology companies are creating positions for sustainability officers dedicated to reducing carbon footprints. Others resist, saying they want to be environmentally conscious but need a return on their investment in everything they do. Whether they are in stocks, paper recycling or tin can recycling, there is a prevailing mentality in the executive suite that if you are not in the office today, you are not really working.

"Our employees who telecommute are probably more productive than those who come in," Anderson said. "As long as I am getting a day's work out of you I do not really care. Telecommuting has a high degree of success."

Dana Sanchez is a business writer based in Sarasota County, Florida.

This article first appeared at Greenbiz.com