ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

It's 11 AM on a weekday morning, gas prices are soaring, and there are lots of affordable collaboration tools on the market. Do you know where your employees are? Better yet, do you know where your employees should be? Working from home.

It seems like teleworking would be all the rage as gas prices continue to climb, but that's not necessarily the case. A recent study conducted by CIO Insight indicates that compared with three years ago, 34 percent of respondents said their companies are more positive towards full time telecommuting while 58 percent remain unchanged. More significantly, the survey found that while 24 percent of respondents said their companies encourage full time telecommuting, 51 percent said their companies discouraged it.

Part time telework fared better in the study with 34 percent of respondents saying their companies discouraged it. 32 percent of respondents said their companies encouraged part time teleworking.

As CIO Insight blogger Eric Chabrow points out, there are problems with teleworking like the resentment of those left in the office, the mingling of personal and work Internet use, and the increase in costs to support telecommuters. He writes: "One-quarter of our respondents said the use of outsourced help-desk services have modestly or significantly increased because of mobile technologies over the past three years. That figure rose to 35 percent in companies that encourage telecommuting."

Good training and work flexibility options for all could help with the first two issues. There is a cost increase in supporting mobile technologies but as Chabrow further points out, this is what your newest and maybe best employees are looking for. "Still, with what feels as an unending increase in fuel costs, businesses may have little choice but to let more employees work from home. Otherwise, as the Telework Exchange survey suggests, employees will seek other places, closer to home, to work. Indeed, nearly three of 10 workers are already doing that. And, nine of 10 said they'd limit job searchers due to commuting costs."

Just in time, the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference had a lot of affordable collaboration tools for smaller businesses. Check them out.