Advantages of Virtual Workplaces & Cost savings

One of the biggest advantages of setting up virtual workplaces is the cost savings for both the employer and employees.

For employees, having the ability to telecommute thanks to having a virtual work place provides them with savings on commuting costs such as fuel. A paper from The Mobility Choice Coalition found that if 10 million employees who have the option to telecommute do so just twice a month, 21 million barrels of oil would be saved a year. With gas prices close to $4.00 a gallon, this would amount to $1.7 billion of fuel cost savings a year.

Employers can also realize saving by allowing virtual workplaces. Among these are real estate or office costs. By allowing more workers to telecommute, companies can reduce the amount of works space they need and it also reduces the resources needed to support these employees in the office (such as office supplies and electricity). According to the Telework Research network, the average real estate savings realized from a full-time teleworker is $10,000 a year. Companies that have implemented several virtual workplaces have seen large cost savings in real-estate cost. For example, IBM has reduced its real estate costs by $50 million and Sun Microsystems saves $68 million per year.

Increase in productivity and efficiency with employees.

According to a Gallup poll in 2007, the average commute time is 48.1 minutes round trip. While the commute by itself may not sound like a long time, there are other factors that can increase this. For example, the time to do things to get ready for work (such as taking a shower, getting dressed and having breakfast) can take another 30 minutes to an hour so adding these activities to the commute time can bring up the "non-work time" to 90 to 120 minutes. An employee can get so much more work done in that time if they did not have to travel into an office. According to the Telework Research Network, companies such as JD Edwards, AT&T and Compaq reported that their telecommuting employees are more productive than their office counterparts.

Larger candidate pool

Virtual workplaces also provides the company a bigger pool of resources, since it allows them to choose the best and most capable employees for the job, regardless of their location. This is definitely an advantage in information technology and computer science, where some positions require very specific skills sets and experiences that may be difficult to find locally