Working from Home Makes Companies Greener and Saves a Bunch of Money
His company’s customers don’t know this, but when Darrel Stickler joins a video conference from his home in Mendocino, California, he does the “newscaster thing” — dress shirt and sports coat up top, a pair of shorts down low.
“I admit to that,” says Stickler, the affable head of environmental strategies and initiatives at San Jose–based Cisco Systems who telecommutes four days a week.
Many companies now offer employees the opportunity to work from home at least part of the time. In fact, remote work has jumped by 115 percent in the United States since 2005, according to the 2017 State of Telecommuting in the U.S. Employee Workforce report by FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics.
Technology has enabled this increase, fueled by the growing awareness that some employees are happier and more productive at home or in a coffee house. And, by the way, businesses can save quite a bit money.
For Cisco Systems, a global technology company that makes teleconferencing and videoconferencing equipment, among its many products, the decision to use its own tech to both encourage telecommuting and reduce corporate travel seems like a no-brainer. What didn’t necessarily go into the equation when Cisco started these initiatives a decade ago is how much the company…
