It's no fad, nor pretext for skiving off out of the office. Teleworking is an organisational approach that can deliver real business benefits and improved quality of life.
Teleworking is becoming more prevalent in the Irish business community. The environment that some of us now work in is less a shadow of what it would have been five years ago. Various forces have created this congested environment, most notably our continuing and ever worsening traffic, increased employer expectations in employee productivity, lack of office space in major cities - and of course the lack of a decent, reliable public transport infrastructure anywhere on this island of ours.

Should you be an employee, a manager or a director, teleworking can help you buy time and energy in your life, time to be spent with friends, family at the gym or if you really want, you can make time for more work. It is also a proven method of staff retention and it has been documented to increase productivity by 25 per cent in some cases where one may need to be free from distraction.

A GartnerGroup study estimates that the number of teleworkers worldwide will reach 137 million by 2003. Gartner estimates that this number would be higher if corporates got it right first time. Instead, some companies sidestepped the best practices and implemented below average teleworking policies.

When evaluating implementing a teleworking solution for your business one has a number of considerations to make. The choice infrastructure for your particular needs is of course an integral part to the overall success and user adoption of the new facility. Manufacturers such as Cisco, Nortel and 3Com are prevalent in this area.

Further consideration in developing an SME-to-enterprise wide teleworking policy should include; identifying the most suitable candidates, establishing your return on investment, evaluating legal obligations, assessing internal teleworking and external access policies, allowing for user training and most importantly the correct business process will need to be established.

The initial investment for teleworking solution that works will vary from £2,000 - £5,000 per user, this figure will include the set up cost in its entirety and it will also depend on the number of people you gear up for the solution. A majority of today's teleworkers worldwide use modem dialup or ISDN for remote-access connectivity. Modem dialup is a cost effective dialup solution for users who require occasional access to their corporate network and transfer relativity small amounts of data. However this is increasingly becoming more old world as the teleco cost drop. ISDN is a good alternative for users who need high-speed access to network resources and large files. DSL will gain momentum as a hardy, high-bandwidth remote-access solution when it is rolled out in Ireland, however it has not been without its teething problems internationally. The central site deploying a teleworking solution should have a modular system that can accommodate these different connection modes from a single device, coupled with a robust thin client solution were necessary.

This article offers only a snapshot of what is a significant business decision for most companies. It is important to implement your solution in a pilot environment first, prior to roll out, generally it helps if candidates are technology aware and will work with you during the set up stage. When embarking on your project identifying a consultant and systems integration company to assist you evaluate the pro and cons of the various solutions available will ensure the success of your project.