10/17/2001 - Updated 11:26 AM ET

Worried Workers Turn to Telecommuting

By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY

Telecommuting is in vogue again. Employees concerned that the workplace could be a target of anthrax-tainted mail or another terrorist attack are staying away and using technology to get the job done.

But the surge in interest is a new challenge for employers. Some are relaxing policies or launching telecommuting arrangements for the first time, while others are wondering when the fear will subside enough to return jittery employees to the workplace.

"Now, people are really anxious and they'd rather be sitting at home," says Chuck Wilsker, executive director at the Washington-based International Telework Association & Council. Wilsker has increased the number of days he spends telecommuting, because of terrorist fears. "A lot of people are going to want to telecommute more, and this is going to be a permanent change."

There are also concerns that full-time telecommuters need to be on alert for suspicious packages if they have corporate mail forwarded directly to their homes. Many, however, often come into the office weekly and get mail that way.

Signs of the shift:

• Employers are setting up new telecommuting arrangements. Reminded of their vulnerability by the terrorist strikes, employers are trying new efforts to safeguard network security. Some require telecommuters to take such precautions as smart cards, secure IDs and software programs.

• Employees are asking to work at home. More than 20% of American workers say being allowed to telecommute might reduce their stress, according to a study by real estate appraisal and consulting firm Integra Realty Resources undertaken after Sept. 11.

Kyle Kraus, president of IT-consulting firm LanTrax in Buffalo, is cutting back on business travel and telecommuting more. Kraus is also saving time by not undergoing hours of security checks at the airport.

"At a time when threats are disrupting business so much, working at home becomes more attractive," Kraus says. "People who have the option to telecommute and feel safe will do so more often."

Companies want less centralization. The terrorist strikes have employers more willing to let staff members work from remote locations.

Avaya, a Basking Ridge, N.J.-based provider of communication systems and software, says more firms are requesting information about letting employees work from multiple sites instead of headquarters. Many of its clients were in the World Trade Center.

"We've worked very closely with people directly affected, but we're hearing this from other companies as well," says Paula Horii at Avaya. She says companies want "seamless phone and video to support workers at geographically dispersed locations."

For some companies, fears are causing them to go beyond setting up telecommuting. Four tenants in the Empire State Building are moving out altogether.

August 28, 2001

Companies Cut Pollution Through E-commuting
by Mark Thomsen

A federal government pilot program will give participating companies pollution credits based on the emission reductions achieved by telecommuting employees.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is looking to reduce pollution, improve traffic conditions and improve the quality of life of workers through a program that promotes telecommuting. The $250,000 National eCommute Pilot Program, which is being administered by the National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI), gives credits to businesses for each of its telecommuters. These credits can then be sold, traded, donated or used as a tax break.

"Reducing the amount of time workers spend in traffic is a tangible way that each and every one of us can help to improve our environment," said Christine Whitman, EPA Administrator, at the program's launch earlier this year. "It also strengthens families; it's good for our communities and our quality of life."

The pilot program is being offered in five U.S. cities: Denver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Houston and Washington D.C. Almost a dozen companies and municipal government organizations have signed up for the program, including Houston-based United Space Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin (ticker: LMT) and Boeing (BA), and the City of Boulder, Colorado.

Auto emissions reductions achieved through telecommuting are being tracked by the program's Teletrips software, which telecommuting employees must use via password. The reductions are translated into mobile emissions credits that have a monetary value.

Besides the actual emissions reductions it achieves, the program should yield data that nudge more companies to allow telecommuting. The Teletrips software was designed to minimize record-keeping for companies and make it easier for them to participate in emissions tracking. The data compiled by Teletrips confirms the validity of earned credits for telecommuting, and therefore should lure more companies to seek credits by letting employees to work from home.

Mary Beatty, Executive Director of NEPI, said the eCommute program will also help companies and governmental organizations target where such emissions reductions initiatives are most effective. "The standard commute in the U.S. is 33 miles," explained Beatty. "The program will enable us to substantiate, for example, whether ecommuting had a greater impact on the air quality in Houston, where the average commute is 42-44 miles."

NEPI has calculated that if 10 percent of the nation's workforce telecommuted one day a week, they would avoid the frustration of driving 24.4 million miles, breathe air with 12,963 tons less air pollution, and conserve more than 1.2 million gallons of fuel each week.

The pilot program is still accepting participants; interested companies can get more information from the eCommute website. Those interested in the Teletrips tracking software can check out the Teletrips website.

U.S. Offers eCommute Incentives

By Gary Gentile
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES - Businesses were offered a powerful incentive yesterday to let workers telecommute: pollution credits that can be used to reduce taxes or sold to other companies for cash.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta told more than 100 business and government representatives that the pilot program, which will include Philadelphia, is designed to reduce traffic and auto emissions by encouraging workers to "eCommute."

But just as important, it includes strong economic rewards for doing so.

"eCommuting is a tool that can help make your employees more productive workers," Mineta said during an appearance in downtown Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is one of five cities chosen for the pilot project. The cities, which also include Houston, Denver, Philadelphia and Washington, were chosen because of their poor air quality.

The program is being administered by the Environmental Protection Agency. It rewards companies that allow employees to work from home, which presumably reduces the number of cars on the road and, thus, their emissions.

Air quality credits will be issued based on an Internet-based survey that companies submit for each employee. The credits can be used to offset fines for pollution caused by such activities as operating a power plant or refinery.

The program also establishes an exchange in which companies that have no use for the credits can sell them.

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© Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

New Program Helps Employees and Gives Business Tax Break
By Karyn-Siobhan Robinson

August 24, 2001 -- Businesses in five metropolitan areas that participate in a voluntary pilot e-commute program will be eligible for federal income tax credits. The National Telework Pilot Project, Don't Pollute/eCommute program is available to companies in Denver, Houston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. "If just 10 percent of the nation's workforce teleworked one day per week, they would avoid the frustration of driving 24.4 million extra miles, breathe air with 12,963 tons less pollution, and conserve more than 1.2 million gallons of fuel each week," said Mary Beatty, executive director of the National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI), which organized the program.

"The eCommute program is unique in that it creates incentives to reach community objectives and empowers companies to make a difference in air quality within their community." "Many cities are non-compliant with air quality standards," said Chuck Wilsker, executive director of the International Telework Association & Council (ITAC) in Washington, D.C. "If you want to build roads to relieve congestion, you won't be able to-unless you clean up the air." Under the eCommute program, businesses receive a credit for each "eCommuter." The company could use those tax credits for an IRS tax break or sell them to power plants and other large polluters, which use them to delay adhering to stricter clean air requirements.

Credits also can be donated to an employer's region to be counted toward meeting pollution-reduction goals, according to Taryn Holowka, project assistant with NEPI. "The credit trading program is a non-coercive, cost-effective way for corporations to help achieve environmental goals and improve the lives of their workers, while also addressing the bottom line," said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who sponsored legislation for NEPI to develop the emissions credit trading and exchange system.

Program participants are provided with free software that calculates emissions reductions automatically. The five pilot cities each have a regional administering agency that is responsible for accounting and maintaining records of each company's credits. The administering agencies also will provide consulting to employers to aid a smooth transition.

"eCommute is a tool that can help you to make your employees more productive workers," said Norman Y. Mineta, secretary of the Department of Transportation in remarks before the Southern California Economic Partnership in Los Angeles, earlier this week. "The hassle of the daily commute can adversely affect your employees' performance and your community's quality of life. But, you have the power to improve both through a telecommuting program."

Karyn-Siobhan Robinson is staff writer for HR News Online.

Government Officials Are Establishing Financial Incentive-based Programs and Outreach Efforts to Promote Telecommuting

Executive Update Magazine
August 2001

Federal and state government officials are actively expressing their support for telecommuting. Studies conducted by Congress and various state governments indicate that increased use of telecommuting will improve traffic conditions, reduce pollution, improve the quality of life for workers, and potentially save organizations billions of dollars. Now, the study results are translating into dollars allocated for federal and state incentive-based and outreach programs to enable more organizations to offer telecommuting to employees.

National Incentive-based Programs

Currently, the National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI) is administering the National eCommute Pilot Program, an incentive-based telecommuting support program offered in Denver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Houston, and the Metro Washington, D.C. area. If the pilot programs are successful, companies offering the option of telecommuting-allowing employees to work from remote locations-will be eligible to receive pollution credits. Some of the uses for the credits could include trading them on the commodities exchange, selling or donating them to other organizations or using them as an IRS tax break.

How does the pilot program work? Once registered for the pilot programs, companies will receive an information packet and an on-site orientation, says Shelley Rappaport, project manager for NEPI. The company's participating employees will receive a password, allowing them to access the pilot program's management software, Teletrips, through the eCommute Web site or the Teletrips Web site at www.teletrips.com. In addition, eCommute program representatives will work with the company's designated contacts to provide ongoing support.

A participating company's time investment in the eCommute pilot program will be minimal, Rappaport says. In the beginning, a company would spend about five hours getting oriented, she says. However, most companies-depending on the number of employees involved-will only spend a couple of hours per month managing their ongoing involvement in the pilot programs, she says.

Rappaport says the pilot programs are still accepting participants, and recommends that interested employers-even those outside of the current pilot program cities-visit the NEPI Web site at http://www.ecommute-nepi.org to learn more about the program and to sign up. Employers may also call Taryn Holowka at NEPI at 202-857-4784 ext. 17 for more information.

Legislation offering tax breaks for telecommuters and their employers, and to establish pilot programs to encourage small businesses to offer telecommuting, is currently pending in both the House and the Senate.

Known as the Telework Tax Incentive Act, House bill H.R. 1012 and Senate bill S.521 would amend the Internal Revenue Code to allow an annual tax credit of up to $500 for "qualified" teleworking expenses. Employers and their teleworking employees would be eligible to receive the tax credit.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-VA) introduced the legislation into the House, while Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced identical legislation into the Senate. Currently, H.R. 1012 is pending consideration in the House Ways and Means Committee, while S.521 is pending consideration in the Senate's Finance Committee.

In addition, if legislation known as the Small Business Telecommuting Act is passed, Congress will appropriate $5,000,000 to the U.S Small Business Administration (SBA) to establish a small business outreach pilot program. Specifically, SBA would use the funding to produce educational materials, conduct outreach programs and purchase demonstration equipment to educate small business employers and to encourage them to offer telecommuting to their employees.

Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) introduced the small business-related legislation, H.R.1035, into the House, while and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA) introduced identical legislation, S. 522, into the Senate. H.R. 1035 is before the House Committee on Small Business, while S.522 is before the Senate Committee on Small Business.

Everyone Seems to Win

The advantages associated with telecommuting seem to be limitless. According to studies, employers, employees and the environment all benefit when organizations promote telecommuting and establish telework programs. Now, federal and state officials are doing their part to help more organizations and workers reap the rewards telecommuting can bring.

Companies in Five US Cities to Get Telecommuting Incentives

4/24/01
Dow Jones International News
WASHINGTON (AP) - Companies in five metropolitan areas could get air pollution credits if they allow their employees to telecommute. Under a program launched Tuesday, employers in and around Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington would be brought into an existing air pollution fighting program designed for power plants. Plants can get special government credit for reducing the pollution coming out of their smokestacks.

Companies in those five areas could participate in the program by keeping employees' cars off the road. Then, they could sell or trade the government credit, like utilities already do. The companies would use a government computer program to calculate pollution reductions.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman said the program would "create a growing economy and clean environment" because employees would become more productive and the air would be cleaner. At a news conference outside the Capitol, Whitman said the five urban centers were chosen because a large number of workers have especially long commutes and because they have a sufficient number of businesses that lend themselves to telecommuting. The program could reduce emissions by 2,613 tons per year for every 100,000 people who participate according to the National Environmental Policy Institute, a Washington based research and advocacy group. Already, about 20 million people work from home at least one day a week, according to the institute.

WASHINGTON - Companies in five metropolitan areas could get air pollution credits if they allow their employees to telecommute. Under a program, employers in and around Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington would be brought into an existing air pollution-fighting program designed for power plants. Plants can get special government credit for reducing the pollution coming out of their smokestacks.

Credits for Telecommuting

4/25/01
The Washington Post
Companies in Washington and four other metropolitan areas could get pollution credits if they allow their employees to telecommute. Under a $250,000 pilot program announced by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman, employers in and around Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington would be brought into an existing air-pollution fighting program designed for power plants. Companies could participate in the program by keeping employees' cars off the road. Then they could sell or trade the government credits, as utilities already do. The National Environmental Policy Institute and Washington technology companies will host a breakfast on May 4 in Reston for area businesses interested in participating.

Pilot Program Will Reward Houston Employers for eCommuters

Karen Masterson
4/25/01
Knight Ridder Tribune Business News: Houston Chronicle -
Texas- A new federal program launched Tuesday will offer tax breaks and other incentives to companies in five cities, including Houston, that let employees work from home.

Businesses would get a credit for each of its "eCommuters" that the company could use for an IRS tax break or sell to power plants and other large polluters - which would use them to delay adhering to stricter clean air requirements.

Houston is one of five cities selected for the pilot project, overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, that essentially pays employers to let workers stay at home. Denver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington are the other four cities.

While Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and some environmentalists say the program would help clean the air over Houston, critics charge it would do little to stop smokestacks from pumping carcinogens and other pollutants into the air over economically poor communities.

"Everyone supports efforts to improve air quality," said DeLay, who joined the EPA Administrator Christie Whitman at a news conference Tuesday to launch the program. He said industry pollution is a separate matter for science, technology and federal policies to address.

eCommuting is a voluntary, incentive-based program designed to help reduce car emissions, DeLay said, that avoids using the "blunt instrument of heavy government regulations." DeLay helped secure funding for what he called this "new and bold approach" to controlling car emissions last year as part of the transportation spending bill.

While not commenting on how to address the larger problem of industrial CO2 emissions, Whitman said eCommuting would help city-smog reduction programs, such as Houston's. "It's a perfect example of what the president is talking about when he says he wants to develop partnerships" to help address environmental issues, she said. Under the eCommute plan, employees would stay home one or two days a week.

The Houston-Galveston Area Council, which oversees emission reduction programs to help the city meet clean-air targets for 2007, received a $200,000 grant to get the program under way. Alan Clark, the council's manager for transportation and air quality, said the group hopes to enlist up to 10 percent of Houston-area workers. And he defended the credit part of the program. He said the council hopes that most businesses will use the credits for tax deductions, instead of selling them to other polluters. But even if all credits were sold, they would not buy companies much ability to pollute," he said. "The amount of reductions in nitrogen oxides that will need to be made by major industries (to meet air quality requirements) is more than all of the emissions from all the vehicles on Houston highways," said Clark. "This program is a short-term strategy for companies that need modest help in securing emissions reduction credits."

Whitman, Lawmakers Kick off National eCommute Program

By David McGuire, Newsbytes
4/24/01
WASHINGTON, DC - Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christie Todd Whitman today officially launched a federal program aimed at increasing the number of Americans who use technology to work from home. "Reducing the amount of time workers spend in traffic is a tangible way that each and every one of us can help to improve our environment," Whitman said in a release announcing the launch of the National Telework and Air Quality Pilot Project.

Administered by the EPA and run by the private, not for profit National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI) the pilot project will allow companies to earn "credits" for any "mobile emissions reductions" achieved by their telecommuting employees. According to a NEPI statement, employers would be permitted to sell those "emissions credits" to manufacturers or utilities seeking to comply with EPA standards. The pilot project was authorized under legislation drafted by Sen. Rick Santorum R-PA and Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA.

Santorum, Wolf and a handful of other lawmakers who supported the legislation were slated to join Whitman in launching the pilot project today. Rep. Connie Morella, R-MD, who worked with Wolf on the telecommuting legislation, believes that such measures are key to reducing gridlock and getting a handle on auto emissions, Morella spokesperson Jonathan Dean said today.

Morella, whose district lies directly in the middle of one of the nation's most traffic-choked regions, has worked extensively with Wolf on telecommuting efforts. Dean said that the advance of Internet technologies has eliminated many of the barriers to broad telecommuting. "As the technology improves," the opportunity for additional teleworking increases."

Using the motto "Don't Pollute- eCommute," NEPI will attempt to publicize the program through a new website, which will be located at http://www.ecommute-nepi.org. Initially the pilot program will be launched in Denver, Houston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.

 

Program Grants Firms Air Pollution Credits

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
4/25/01
Companies in five metropolitan areas could get air pollution credits if they allow their employees to telecommute. Under a program launched Tuesday, employers in Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington would be brought into an existing air pollution fighting program designed for power plants.

Denver Part of a Pilot Telecommuting Project

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
4/25/01
Getting workers out of their cars and onto the Internet could eliminate thousands of tons of air pollution over the next decade, say backers of a new "eCommuting" program.

Denver is one of five cities that will participate in a pilot project announced Tuesday that will let companies earn and sell emissions credits for allowing employees to work at home and tracking the amount of commuting miles they save.

U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, a Boulder Democrat, joined Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and a bipartisan collection of lawmakers, in announcing the program Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol. The program, authorized by Congress last year, is the first time the federal government has tried to use emissions credit trading to reduce automobile emissions and local traffic.

Companies that earn credits could sell them on the open market to other firms that need help complying with clean air regulations. It's meant to provide a net reduction in air pollution while also reducing traffic and conserving fuel.

The National Environmental Policy Institute, which developed a program, has estimated that if 10 percent of workers telecommuted one day a week, it could prevent 12,963 tons of air pollution and save more than 1.2 million gallons of fuel each week.

Northglenn Mayor Don Parsons, who works out of a home office, said that in addition to helping the environment, telecommuting improves quality of life. "The benefit is there is no commute time. You can put in more hours, whether working or with your family," he said. "I get up at 7:30 in the morning and I'm at work at 7:30."

4/25/01
The Arizona Republic

Companies in five metropolitan areas could get air-pollution credits if they allow their employees to telecommute. Under a program launched Tuesday, employers in and around Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington would be brought into an existing air-pollution fighting program designed for power plants. Plants can get special government credit for reducing the pollution coming out of their smokestacks and sell or trade them.

Telecommuting Incentives

Morning Star-Wilmington NC
Washington Companies in five metropolitan areas could get air pollution credits if they allow their employees to telecommute. Under a program launched Tuesday, employers in and around Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington would be brought into an existing air pollution fighting program designed for power plants.