Recent Experience with Teleworking: Effects on Transport
Sirka Heinonen and Matthias Weber, VTT & IPTS
Issue: Teleworking has raised many expectations, ranging from energy savings and reduction of congestion to the diversification of employment in peripheral and rural areas. In fact, very little is known about its actual and potential risks and benefits. Recent findings about first experiences with teleworking can help us to get a better idea of its limitations and potential benefits.
Relevance: One of the main reasons for interest in teleworking is the beneficial impact it might have on transportation patterns. Drawing from this body of evidence appropriate measures to stimulate and guide the uptake of teleworking could be developed. TheBenefits and Drawbacks of Teleworking
Teleworking has been the subject of public debate for a few
years now, but the high expectations have not yet been realized. Nevertheless,
it is predicted to have a major impact on various fields of society, both
directly and indirectly. These impacts are highly complex, difficult to
disentangle and cover a wide range of areas. Given space limitations we will
concentrate here on the impact of home teleworking on transport.
Home teleworking, which is important, but not the only form of
teleworking, could be defined as the use of telecommunications to partially or
completely replace daily commuting to and from work. The most important impacts
of teleworking are hence expected on traffic, and this issue will be dealt with
in more detail in this article. A number of other important social issues,
however, also come into play. While teleworkers may be able to benefit from
commuting cost and time savings, the changes which teleworking implies for their
lifestyles may actually be far more important. Work and leisure time would not
be clearly separated any more, representing the risk of permanent stress for the
individual. However, teleworking may a be 'relaxing' experience if one does not
need to adjust to a rigid working environment. On the other hand, isolation and
a lack of social contacts are potentially negative side effects. In economic
terms, the impacts of teleworking are not clear, either. While it may increase
productivity of the individual worker and generate new job opportunities, the
flexibility of hiring teleworkers anywhere in the world may also lead to a shift
of employment to lower-wage countries.
Comparative Situation of Teleworking in Europe
In general, data on teleworking need to be treated with a great
deal of care because the definitions used are often inconsistent and disguise
rather than clarify the real situation. According to an estimate there are
currently 1.25 million teleworkers in Europe. However, in another estimate the
corresponding figure was three times higher (Handy & Mokhtarian 1996).
Variations in the estimates on current levels of teleworking are explained on
the one hand by the difficulties and differences in defining teleworking, and on
the other hand, by the use of small and non-representative samples. For example,
in France the official number of teleworkers for the year 1993 was as low as 16
000 due to a very strict definition of teleworking. For the year 1994 another
estimate listed 215 000 French teleworkers. The United Kingdom has 600 000
teleworkers, which is the highest number in absolute figures in Europe. (Korte
& Wynne 1996).
Owing to its high standards and penetration in
telecommunications, Finland has one of the most 'teleworkingintensive' labour
markets in Europe. At the moment, there are 150,000 Finnish teleworkers, a
little over 8 % of all Finnish employees. . The 325,000 Swedish teleworkers, who
work at home at least for one day a week, also represent some 8 % of the working
population. Within a European context, these figures can be regarded as high. In
Italy the teleworking population represents 0.2 % and in the United Kingdom and
Ireland 1.21 % of the labour force.
However, the data about employment moves from non-teleworking to
teleworking is subject to major uncertainties. The rising number of
self-employed and part-time teleworkers makes interpreting the data difficult,
especially because they do not necessarily figure in the teleworking
statistics..
Further differences among European countries can be observed
with regard to the awareness of teleworking among individuals. Knowledge about
teleworking is a sine qua non condition for individuals to form opinions
on this mode of employment. According to the EU's TELDET study, knowledge among
the population about teleworking varies significantly in different European
countries, ranging from 23% in Spain to 59% in France. (Korte & Wynne 1996).
The findings of the Finnish Experience on Teleworking Project (FET) showed that
three out of four Finnish wage-earners know about teleworking through
information acquired from newspapers, radio, TV or various events.
Figure 1. Knowledge about teleworking among wage-earners in some European countries in 1994 (Luukinen 1995).
Interest in teleworking varied less across the countries. The
results of the surveys within the EU TELDET project indicate that interest in
teleworking from home as a permanent mode of working ranged from Germany's
slightly less than 30% to Spain's 42% of the employed labour force.
Correspondingly, 36% of German and 45% of Spanish employees show interest in
teleworking at least one day a week. 54 % of Finnish interviewees in the FET
project reported that they would consider working outside their normal workplace
at least one day a week. The high interest figures need to be interpreted
cautiously, because interest in teleworking does not mean that it would
necessarily be adopted in practice.
The Potential Teleworking Population
These figures provide a first impression of the future potential
of teleworking, but the rate of growth of teleworking is far from clear, mainly
as a result of the difficulty of establishing even how many workers currently
telecommute, but the results of the surveys of the TELDET project suggest that
the development potential for teleworking in Europe is around one fifth of the
labour force. This estimate indicates that the target of the European Commission
to create 10 million teleworking jobs by the year 2000 is not unrealistic. A new
type of analysis of the teleworking potential will be carried out in Finland in
a forecasting project funded by the European Social Fund and the Finnish
Ministry of Labour. This new method combines data on commuting behaviour and
information on the jobs suited for teleworking. It reflects the fact that
teleworking is an option only for certain parts of the population.
Basically, the future of telecommuting depends on whether
employers provide the opportunity to telecommute and whether workers take
advantage of this opportunity. Government policies can encourage both, and their
perceived impact will help determine the support for teleworking by employees,
employers and policy-makers. An important reason for the hesitant take-up of
teleworking lies in the uncertainty of its impacts for the
individual, for employers as well as for society as a whole.
Other obstacles to teleworking are based on prejudices such as
problems expected to arise from the lack of supervision, or simply ignorance on
the part of management. The price of information technology does not, however,
seem to hinder teleworking in the same way as it did in the past.
New evidence of the Impact of Teleworking on Transportation Patterns
As indicated above, knowledge about the actual impact of
teleworking is very limited. At least with regard to transportation patterns,
the findings of a number of recent research studies provide new insights into
the different mechanisms in play.
Optimistic views expect that
teleworkers will help ease up traffic congestion, which in some major European
cities has grown to uncontrollable and unhealthy proportions. By reducing
commuting, teleworkers indirectly reduce the need to spend large sums of money
on the construction and maintenance of roads and parking space, traffic control
and car-related waste disposal. Telecommutingís most important single benefit is
saving fuel, thus reducing many of the related pollution and waste problems.
According to estimates by the US Environmental Protection Agency, approximately
10 million American workers drive an average of 75 miles round trip to work in
cars that get an average of 25 miles per gallon. As teleworkers, they could save
30 million gallons of fuel every workday while keeping 600 millions of carbon
dioxide (C02) out of the atmosphere (Anzovin 1994).
With these potential benefits in mind, transportation planners
see telecommuting as a promising way to combat increasing congestion, increasing
energy use, and declining air quality. Urban and inter-urban traffic congestion
is now one of the major costs affecting business and public administrations in
Europe. More than 50 billion ECU are lost every year through delays and
accidents. Teleworking can substitute for at least some journeys (Teleworking
94).
Other researchers have argued that congestion will not worsen in
the future anyway, given structural shifts in the demographics of automobile
ownership and use. The growth rate of automobile use should equal the growth
rate of population, since nearly every potential driver now has access to an
automobile. (Handy & Mokhtarian 1996). If congestion does not thus increase
dramatically in the future, or at least commuting times do not increase, then
the role of congestion per se as a motivation for telecommuting may
remain roughly at its current level of importance. However, government policies
designed to reduce congestion and improve air quality may themselves stimulate
teleworking. Information and communication technologies together with some other
measures such as radical increases in vehicle prices or driving costs might mean
that commuting traffic will be reduced through increasing teleworking. As an
example, the decision to introduce road tolls in Stockholm from 1999 may become
a factor which further stimulates teleworking.
However, these optimistic perspectives take into account only
the positive impacts of teleworking on travel behaviour and ignore several
negative and indirect/secondary effects which may counterbalance the positive
ones.
From a more critical stance, the interactions between
teleworking and physical transportation are regarded as less simple to
disentangle. The widespread application of advanced information and
telecommunication technology (ICT) for teleworking may generate new types of
transportation as well as reduce the need for physical transport. Teleworking
facilities provide increasing possibilities to make contacts beyond geographic
boundaries between both organizations and individuals. Even though the majority
of such new contacts can be maintained electronically, they may gradually result
in face-to-face meetings over a long distance. While certain types of trips are
being replaced, some new trips will be generated. There has been some scepticism
about how large net savings from reducing travel by teleworking might be. Some
forecasters argue that people often combine work trips with other trips and that
leisure travel will be extended. This argument is in line with the long-term
observation that the daily travel time budget has remained fairly constant over
the past decades - in spite of substantial technological transformations. If
these arguments hold, then the reduction would be minimal.
The situation becomes even more complicated when looking at a
number of secondary effects. While personal vehicle use has the largest impact
on emissions, the impact from the mode of travel is also worth a closer
analysis. Car pools may dissolve if teleworkers drop out, and transit operators
may lose revenue in the near term. However, in case of teleworking centres,
trips made closer to home may shift to non-motorized modes such as cycling and
walking. The Puget Sound Telecommuting Demonstration Project conducted in early
1990s by the Washington State Energy Office provides travel diary data on 104
teleworkers, both home-based and centre-based. Home-based teleworking was found
to reduce travel and emissions by means primarily of the elimination of
commuting. The reductions in vehicle kilometres and in the number of daily trips
in the home-based group were 66.5 % and 31.9 %, respectively. In the
centre-based group the vehicle kilometres were significantly reduced, while the
number of trips and cold starts were not. (Henderson & Mokhtarian 1996,
44).
When a person turns to teleworking one day per week, the number
of commuting trips to and from work will diminish by 20 %. Accordingly, this
requires that a teleworking day is a full day and not two half days.
Correspondingly, two teleworking days per week give a reduction of 40 % in the
number of work trips. On the other hand, changing time budgets of teleworkers
can also increase their leisure travel. One important issue for the future of
teleworking and its possible impact on transportation arises therefore, and more
specifically, from the frequency of telecommuting, that is, whether workers will
do it occasionally, all the time, or something in between. (Handy &
Mokhtarian 1996). A related aspect is the duration of teleworking for a given
individual: is teleworking sustained over a period of several months or years;
is it an on-and-off alternative? The distribution of teleworkers, by virtue of
their telecommuting, will have important implications for the transportation and
environmental impacts of telecommuting.
According to another critical view other travellers will take
the road space vacated by teleworkers. Family members who normally resort to the
bike, the bus etc. may start to use the car instead of the home working member
of the family.
In the long term, the temporal and geographical flexibility of
teleworkers may also change the housing pattern. If you are not so tied
physically to the workplace as earlier, it is easier to move to a more
attractive living environment, for example to less polluted rural areas.
Consequently, long-distance commuting only a few days per week becomes more
common, resulting in fewer but longer trips.
Teleworking 'Best Practice' in Europe
The Consensus Group within the DIPLOMAT project has produced
guidelines to support various actions on teleworking. One target is the
reduction of traffic in Europe. According to this by 2002 the traffic reduction
due to teleworking will be 450 million trips per year, equivalent to ten billion
fewer kilometres commuted each year, with a corresponding reduction in energy
and exhaust emissions.
Europe could promote teleworking projects as manifestations of
sustainable mobility. In order to avoid undesirable impacts of generating trips
which are not work-related, the awareness of teleworkers should be focused on
environmental benefits. Organizations are key actors and facilitators of
teleworking. By adopting teleworking and telebusiness they can change their
travel patterns within business operation, but the personnelís commuting
frequencies as well. Teleworking could be practised as a tool for 'commuting
management' while promoting the image of ecological thinking in an enterprise.
The diffusion of teleworking could thus be seen as an expression of the
willingness to reduce commuter traffic and as an indicator of a sustainable
information society.
The best practice of teleworking realizes that the issue of
teleworking cannot be taken simply as a black and white choice of working mode,
but as a rich variety of applications simultaneously enhancing the quality of
life and the quality of the environment. A broader vision of teleworking should
be adopted comprising, besides home-based teleworking, telecentres,
telecottages, relocated back offices and mobile work.
Good teleworking practice involves careful planning of each
teleworking scheme in organizations. Adequate technical support must be provided
for teleworkers in order to avoid loss of efficiency at work. It should be borne
in mind that social implications always underpin the successful implementation
of teleworking. Teleworking should always be adopted on a voluntary basis.
Teleworkers also have to be given the chance to return to their 'normal' working
place if they wish. Job security and social benefits need to remain the same as
those offered to colleagues working at the office in similar jobs. Managers and
colleagues should be well informed on teleworking experiments. Teleworking
should not be implemented as a separate case of work arrangements, but included
in organization's strategies.
Policy Implications and Needs
The promotion of teleworking cannot merely be based on the high
level of awareness or on all the positive attention teleworking has been given.
If concrete results are to be achieved, systematic development work is
necessary. The gap between the interest and practice needs to be
bridged.
Thus far, experience has shown that in order to successfully
promote the idea of teleworking, well-thought-out actions are needed firstly to
enhance the level of knowledge concerning teleworking, and, secondly, to affect
the attitudes and technical facilities in organizations, so as to facilitate
their decision-making concerning teleworking experiments. In spite of the new
findings on the impact of teleworking on transportation, the paucity of data
remains a problem. More research and experimentation projects should be launched
to gather quantitative data on travel patterns in teleworking.
At national level, various campaigns could be launched to
encourage business employers to experiment with teleworking and to monitor its
impact on employeesí commuting. As an example of how to disseminate best
practice in teleworking, nominations of the best performing teleworking
organizations could be awarded, for example, during the fourth European
Teleworking Week to be held in autumn 1998. In addition, a greater willingness
on the part of public institutions and authorities, especially at European
level, to use telecommunication facilities for their meetings and workshops
would send an important signal for a strategy for the promotion of
teleworking.
In general terms, a dual approach of 'carrot and stick' could be
applied in Europe. Besides regulatory measures (e.g. on working conditions),
various incentives such as tax reductions could be introduced for employers
enabling and employees practising teleworking. Finally, local urban development
policies could adopt teleworking as a tool for reducing daily commuting
journeys.
Teleworking, transportation,
best
practice, impact
assessment
The author would like to thank Fabio Leone, Alois Frotschnig
(IPTS) and Maarten Botterman (DG XIII) for their useful assistance.
Sirkka Heinonen, VTT - Communities and Infrastructure, Tel.: +358-9-456-6288, Fax: +358-9-464-174, E-mail: http://www.jrc.es/iptsreport/vol21/english/gifs/mailto:%20sirkka.heinonen@vtt.fi
Matthias Weber, IPTS, Tel.: +34-5-448-8336, Fax: +34-5-448-8326,
E-mail: http://www.jrc.es/iptsreport/vol21/english/gifs/mailto:%20matthias.weber@jrc.es
About the authors