Enterprise Communications Featured Article

Grandparents in a distant town aren’t the only ones who are putting videoconferencing and modern communications to good use. Enterprise businesses also have embraced the technology, and some form of telecommuting has become common at almost every business.

While the dream of a cubicle-free work life may not have materialized for most, to the consternation of those with wanderlust, many firms are now embracing a happy medium where there is at least some opportunity to work outside of the office, thanks to mobile computing and unified communications.

Roughly 83 percent of workers surveyed in a 2012 Wrike study said they work outside of the office at least some of the time, and 66 percent of these respondents felt that this was just the beginning for telecommuting.

A 2012 study by the Society of Human Resource Management also bears this out. Roughly 46 percent of organizations use virtual teams in the workplace, according to the study, and among multinationals this percentage jumps to 66 percent. U.S.-based operations lag somewhat behind, however, with only 28 percent currently using virtual teams.

That’s partially because the advantages of telecommuting are so apparent for globally-minded firms. Companies such as BP, Nokia (News - Alert) and advertising giant, Ogilby & Mather have found that telecommuting enables them to pull expertise from any location, add diverse perspectives on problems, and keep work moving 24 hours a day through follow-the-sun scheduling of teams across time zones.

Stitching together talent from across the globe is the most common reason that firms use telecommuting, according to the study by the Society of Human Resource Management; in its study, roughly 53 percent of respondents said this was the greatest draw. Nearly as many, 49 percent, also said that it enabled better collaboration across borders. A third common reason is connecting global business units more cohesively.

Firms such as General Electric have more than half of all their employees based overseas, and 97.8 percent of Nestle’s sales are outside the U.S.

Virtual teams, enabled by telecommuting technology, can serve a variety of purposes. The most common, according to the human resources study, is using them for project teams; nearly 80 percent of those surveyed said this was why they had such teams. A little more than half also said it stitched together top management teams that were not physically in the same space, and a little less than half use virtual teams for action teams.

There are, of course, many reasons why telecommuting makes sense. But these are some of the most popular uses in business today. Telecommuting is definitely not just about working from home.