A New Era of Telecommuting
In November, President Barack Obama announced a two year pay freeze for federal workers, eliminating plans for a 1.4 percent across-the-board raise in 2011 for 2.1 million federal civilian employees, including those working at the Defense Department and no raises at all in 2012. (The pay freeze doesn’t affect those in uniform or civilian being promoted who would still get the higher pay that comes with a position.)
Then last Thursday he signed the Telework Enhancement Acot of 2010 H.R. 1722 that directs each federal agency to design policies to promote telecommuting. About 5% of federal workers telecommute. The goal is to increase that number.
Daniel Akaka ( D-Hawaii) co-sponsor of the Senate bill in the Senate last May with George Voinovich (R-Ohio) George Voinovich said in a statement, “This new law will reduce traffic and pollution by allowing more federal workers to stay off the road and complete their duties from home via telework. It will save the government money on office space and help recruit and retain top-notch employees.”
The office space savings could be considerable. In 2005 the General Services Administration estimated that almost half the 340,000 square feet of government office space was leased at a cost then of $3.8 billion dollars annually. With employees telecommuting it’s possible that space will be superfluous.
Two years ago Telework Exchange in Alexandria, Virginia a public-private partnership that researches the phenomenon estimated that if all eligible Federal employees worked remotely more than $13 billion dollars in commuting costs would be saved annually and over 21 billion pounds of pollutants would be eliminated each year. Then it was estimated if government workers telecommuted three days a week they would save $6,000.00 a year in commuting costs. Perhaps that now considered a defacto raise.
We talked to Bryant Rice of DEGW in San Francisco who considers the benefits and drawbacks of remote work in an upcoming post and how to tell whether you are working effectively off site.
Tags: federal workers, leased space, telecommute, telework, Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 H.R>
