Give Your Employees a $1,700 a Year Raise, Free
The Find: Sun Microsystems conducted a careful study of its flexible working program and found that giving its employees the freedom and tools to work at home saved each employee $1,700 a year in gas and vehicle wear and tear.- The Source: Sun's "Open Work Energy Measurement Project," an in-depth study of the energy consumption of 100 participants of the company's flexible working program.
The average Sun employee opts to work from home 2.5 days a week. What does that work out to in energy (and energy cost) savings?
- Commuting, Sun found, is 98 percent of an employee's carbon footprint. Cut their commuting by two fifths and you lower their CO2 emissions nearly as much.
- Working from home 2.5 days per week saved the employees an average of 2.5 weeks of commute time.
- Driving less amounts to a raise of $1,700 a year: that's how much the average worker saved in gas costs and wear and tear on the car in a year.
The Question: With gas prices as high as they are (and concerns about global warming only increasing), why aren't more companies saving their information workers the expense of a commute a couple of days a week?