In the recent CIO Insight poll (see link below), 29% of the respondents say they’d give up chocolate to telecommute. Yeah, right! For how long? 17% said they’d give up a salary increase for telecommuting. And 5% would even ditch the spouse. Okay… that’s going a little too far. But evidently, that’s what they said. Check out the story here.
http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/IT-Management/What-Your-Employees-Would-Give-Up-to-Telecommute-503693/
Evidently, people will do almost anything to work at home.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that the productivity boosts are enormous. Focus comes so easily. But only if you are self-motivated person with autonomous tasks. Project team members with frequent ties to other employees can’t pull this off well.
There is also no substitute for face-to-face interaction. Ten times the information passed between people when they look each other in the eye. Information fidelity drops as you employ lessor communication tools like telephone, email, and finally the worst, text. Even Morse code is faster than text, as Jay Leno demonstrated, but not by much.
But the upshot is, employees will give up almost anything to telecommute. Just remember that, project managers!