Telecommuting Helps Cannondale Financial Grow Business, Cut Expenses, and Recruit Key People

In the highly competitive mortgage brokerage business, where it's grow or die, Cannondale Financial has found the secret to growth: Hire telecommuters. John Reyes, Managing Director of Cannondale Financial, says he hires people in the states where he wants to do business. They work from home and originate loans in their territories, enabling Cannondale Financial to establish a local presence in multiple states, without the expense of opening and maintaining brick-and-mortar offices. This strategy has helped Wilton, Connecticut-based Cannondale cost-effectively expand into New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The strategy is paying off. "My volume has increased 50%," says Reyes. "These are loans we would not have originated if I didn't have these [telecommuters] working for me."

Merrill Lynch Recovery & Continuity Helped By Telework

The recovery of Wall Street financial industry activity less than a week after September 11 was made possible by the rebuilding of communication infrastructure and the creating of virtual work environments for relocated financial firms.

Soon after the evacuation of the World Financial Center, some 9,000 Merrill Lynch bankers, traders, analysts, and support staff were temporarily working from remote locations in Manhattan, New Jersey and Connecticut. Web-based communications smoothed the displacement of the firms operating functions. Alternate transportation service information (company shuttles, vans and ferries) was posted on the company employee website along with updates on policies and procedures, ongoing corporate memorandums to the staff, and a database of contact information for all the company employees.

Number of Telecommutes Increases by 17 Percent
National Survey Shows 1 in 5 Americans Are Teleworking

Over the past year, the number of telecommuters in the United States increased 17 percent to 28.8 million. An overwhelming majority of these teleworkers are more satisfied with their jobs, more productive and feel more loyal to their employers.
These are among the key findings of an annual survey conducted by the International Telework Association and Council (ITAC) and sponsored by AT&T. The survey explores current telework practices and provides helpful insights for businesses looking to meet the need for new or expanded telework programs for their employees.

Lawmakers Look to Encourage Working From Home

As part of Congress' effort to help federal agencies meet their legislated requirement of offering telecommuting to 25 percent of their eligible workers this year, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) was asked to identify and compare barriers to telecommuting in both the private and public sectors.

Bob Robertson, director of Education, Workforce and Income Security Issues for the GAO, told Congress, "The most frequently cited obstacle to increased use of telecommuting related to management concerns." OPM's June 2001 report on federal agency efforts to establish telecommuting policies identified similar potential barriers. The Federal Office of Policy and Management reported that its survey of 97 federal agencies showed that management reluctance was the most frequently cited barrier to increased telecommuting among federal employees.

Government Report Shows: "Telework Works"

What do a budget analyst and medical librarian have in common? They both work for the federal government and telework successfully. These and other federal workers are presented as examples of the benefits of telework in an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) study called: "Telework Works: A Compendium of Success Stories". OPM undertook the study as part of their overall effort to encourage federal agencies to offer telework options to more employees. The study provides anecdotal evidence showing that a variety of federal agencies and their employees are benefiting from telework.

Connecticut's Telecommuting Friendly Employers

Telework News is in the process of locating employers in Connecticut that are "telecommuting friendly" -- in other words, companies currently offering their employees a telecommuting option.

Supervisors Are Managing and Telecommuting

When Karen Briegs teleworks two days each week from her Hillsborough, NJ home everyone on the 10-member team she manages at Schering-Plough's corporate campus in Kenilworth (NJ) knows their responsibilities and Briegs' expectations. "When I'm teleworking, I'm not looking over their shoulders and I'm not acting as a crutch for them either," admits Briegs, the assistant director of the company's clinical information center. "Since I work remotely my staff has learned to be very independent."