Hello workshifters! We rarely ask for your help, but this is a pretty special opportunity. We're asking for it particularly as this will continue to spread the word on workshifting. It's also for our amazing friends at Citrix Online, co-founders and power behind Workshifting.com. So please help us keep the lights on around here, and consider voting.

Enterprise 2.0 is the leading conference and expo for organizations using collaborative technologies to accelerate information flow and drive revenue.  This forum is for key decision makers to see the range of technology available to add to their business but, often times, learning how to integrate technology effectively is a piece left out of the puzzle. With a new generation of workforce coming up, primarily made up of Millennials, organizations are now in a position to shift their structures to support the new generation's approach to work. There is a real need for educating companies on how to harness new technologies for this workforce, understanding that many of them are embracing the idea of workshifting.  

So what's next?  

Citrix Online's VP and CTO, Bernd Christiansen has been nominated to speak on how to drive adoption and organizational change in a way that encourages a more efficient, agile and highly productive workforce. He hopes to share the company's views on how technology can be leveraged to enable the next generation workforce, understanding and adapting to Gen Ys and Millennials' different work styles and approaches to work.  He will discuss how behaviors beyond the office are impacting the way the next generation workforce likes to operate: less hierarchy, more collaboration, less process and more results. Bernd's session will look at new work styles and how smart companies can support this change through technology and figure out how it can be leveraged to enable, as opposed to distract, employees -- the key to succeeding as a 'Next Gen Enterprise."

Your vote will help put Bernd's speakership entry and workshifting in front of the official voting committee. Please register and vote for Bernd.


Photo Credit: Lakeandlocal

Our just released eBook "Workshifting: Bottom Line Benefits" (sponsored by Citrix Online) quantifies the business, individual, and societal impact that regular telecommuting could have on the nation and for small to mid-size companies.

Less than 2% of U.S. employees work from home the majority of the time (not including the self-employed), but 40% hold jobs that are compatible with telework. If those employees who wanted to (about 80%) did so just half of the time (roughly the national average for those who do) (*):


Businesses would:

• Increase productivity by over $235 billion
• Save $124 billion in real estate, electricity, and related costs
• Save $46 billion in absenteeism
• Save $31 billion in employee turnover
• Improve continuity of operations
• Avoid environmental sanctions, city access fees, etc.
• Improve work life balance and better address the needs of families, parents, and senior caregivers.
• Avoid the 'brain drain' effect of retiring boomers by allowing them to work flexibly
• Be able to recruit and retain the best people
• Better address the needs of disabled workers, rural residents, and military families
  

Individuals would:

• Achieve a better work-life balance
• Recoup 2-3 weeks of free time per year--time they'd have otherwise spent commuting
• Save $2,000-$7,000/year
• Save $15 billion at the pumps
• Suffer fewer illnesses
  

The Nation would:

• Save 289 million barrels of oil--equivalent to 37% of our Persian Gulf imports
• Reduce greenhouse gases by 53 million tons/year--27% of the President's 2020 goal
• Reduce road travel by 115 billion miles/year saving $2 billion in road maintenance
• Reduce road congestion thereby increasing productivity for non-workshifters as well
• Save 100,000 people from traffic-related injury or death
• Improve emergency responsiveness
• Reduce pollution from road work and new office construction
• Preserve open spaces
• Reduce the number of latchkey kids
• Alleviate the strain on our crumbling transportation infrastructure
• Reduce the offshoring of jobs and homeshore some that have already been lost
• Raise the standard of living in rural and disadvantaged areas
• Open new avenues for workforce retraining 
• Reduce terrorism targets of opportunity
  

In total, that's an economic impact of almost $650 billion a year!

At the TeleworkResearchNetwork we've synthesized over 250 case studies, scholarly reviews, research papers, books, and other documents on workshifting and related topics. And we've interviewed the nation's largest and smallest virtual employers and their employees, corporate executives, telework advocates and naysayers, top researchers, legislators, legal representatives, leaders of successful telework advocacy programs in both the public and private sector, and venture capitalists who have invested in the remote work model.

Using the latest Census data, and assumptions from dozens of government and private sector sources, we've developed a model to quantify the economic, environmental, and societal potential on telecommuting for every, city, county, Congressional District, and state in the nation.  It's been used by company and community leaders throughout the U.S. and Canada to quantify the extent to which workshifting can reduce greenhouse gases and petroleum usage, save money, improve work-life balance, increase employee loyalty and turnover, reduce absenteeism, increase productivity, and reduce highway congestion and traffic accidents. You can find it over here along with a model that allows companies and communities to quantify their own potential telecommuting savings based on dozens customizable parameters such as real estate costs, turnover, absenteeism, participation rate, frequency, labor costs, etc.

More about telecommuting, the pros and cons, who's doing it, and other resources for companies, individuals and researchers are available at TeleworkResearchNetwork.com.

"It's time to make the road less traveled the way to work."

Want to get your hands on a copy? You can download it over here.


Photo Credit: Tyler Ingram

Today is a special day around here for the Workshifting team because it's our first birthday!  Yay!  When we launched this project last year we didn't know where it would take us but in the past year we have been fortunate enough to have gained a great group of contributors and a ridiculously awesome community.  

Over the past 12 months we've shared over 200 blog posts (subscribe!), 1,600 tweets (follow us!), hundreds of updates over on Facebook (like us!) and tens of thousands of links in Google.  I've spent some time digging up our most popular content over the past year, just in case you missed some of it.  The nice aspect of workshifting is that though some of this content is a year old, it is still relevant now.  So, here are our top 10 posts, in order of popularity, of the past year:

• Board Room or Bored Room 
• How I Convinced My Boss to Let Me Become a Workshifter
• Don't Be "That Guy" While Workshifting
• What Does Gen Y Want from the Workforce
• Why You Need to Know About the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act
• Five Things in My Work Bag
• Generation "Y Do I Have to Work from the Office?"
• Lifestyle Design Tips that Rock Stars Can Teach You 
• 7 Considerations for Setting Up a Home Office
• 5 Sites for Better Flights
  

So what's next for Workshifting? Over the next year we're looking forward to adding more contributors (want to become one?), providing more resources, hold a few meetups (hopefully internationally) to meet you, and a few other ideas that are being worked on in a top-secret, undisclosed workshifting location.

Besides what we're already up to, we also want to know how we can be most helpful to you over the next year.  Let us know in the comments below what you want to see from Workshifting in the coming months and years.

We hope that you continue to join us for this ride and thank you for everything over the past year!

Happy birthday workshifters!

Photo Credit: Omer Wazir

Are you passionate about workshifting, time management, productivity, lifehacks, work/life balance, organization and everything else that we cover around here?  Would you like to become a regular Workshifting contributor?

If you're violently shaking your head up and down then we would love to have you submit an application to join our team.  We're looking for contributors who want to write weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.  If you want to join a fast growing and fun blog, then we'd love to have you.

If you're interested, please complete the form below.  We'll evaluate all submissions and if there seems like there is a fit then we'll reach out to you directly.


Photo Credit: xanxhor

You may have begun noticing a few changes around here over the past couple weeks.  But, in case you hadn't noticed the changes, or you only check us out through an RSS reader, I thought I'd take a few minutes to point out the updates we've been making.

Removal of Ad Blocks

We made a decision to remove the ad blocks that were located in the right sidebar, for now.  The blog is still powered by Citrix Online and managed by myself and my team at New Marketing Labs.  But, we thought the ad blocks were getting boring and taking up precious sidebar space that we could use to add some more engaging content to.

Content Widget

To make up for the empty space left by the removal of the ad blocks, we have added a tabbed content widget at the top.  The content widget features the newest posts, favorites, our favorites and the top posts tagged "workshifting".  If you haven't done so already, take a few minutes to check out of a couple of the posts that are being featured there such as:

• Measuring Productivity on Adding Value vs Wasting Time
• From the Trenches: Poor Management
• 5 Mental Workshifting Triggers
• Churchill and The Importance of Routine
• Clearing the Air on Employee Background Checks
  

Streamlined About Page

We have cleaned up the About page and added photos and bios for all of our phenomenal contributors.  Many of them have been with the team since the May 2009 launch however the About page was never fully updated.  Now you can learn more about your favorite workshifting.com contributor.

Workshifting.com Goes Mobile

Probably the most requested feature update from the community was for us to create a mobile version of the website.  After all, if you're workshifting then you're probably reading this from a mobile device.  Well, we're proud to announce a mobile optimized version of the blog section of the website.  For this round of updates we have created a mobile optimized version only for the blog.  However, over time we do plan on adding other sections of the website.

To check it out, you can go to workshifting.com/m/ or just head over to the blog from your mobile device and the redirect should forward you to the mobile version immediately.

Opened Comments

A frequent request we received was to open up the Comments section so that you didn't have to log-in.  Initially we required you to log-in to leave a comment to help control spam on a fast growing website.  However, we have decided to deal with the spam where it pops up and open up comments.  Now you no longer need to log-in.  Since this update we have already seen a 2x increase in commenting and hope that you will add to that by leaving a comment on a post from time to time.

We have several other updates planned over the next coming weeks and months including several back-end improvements.  Our goal is to continue to be the single resource for all of your workshifting needs.  Therefore, what would YOU like to see updated, improved or created that would be useful to you?  Let us known in the comment section below.  We'll keep track of all requests and try to implement as many as possible especially those that will be helpful to the overall community.

As always, thank you for the continued support of workshifting.com!

Let's Celebrate!

Home Enterprise Day is happening on Friday, November 20th and Enterprise Nation (a resource website I founded in 2006) members are making plans to celebrate.

The Day marks the first national celebration of home business. It's being held as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week and the aim is to encourage more people to start a business from home and support existing home businesses to grow. There are a number of ways you can get involved:

Attend the Enterprise Nation Conference

We're hosting a national conference on the Day with a top line-up of speakers who will inform and inspire. Speakers like Doug Richard (former Dragon & CEO, School for Startups), Louise Campbell (founder, Myehive.com) and, from the world of media Lisa Sykes (Features Editor, Country Living), Jenny Culshaw (Producer, Working Lunch) and Jimmy Leach (head of Digital, The Independent).  The event is being held in London and on the day we'll be launching our 2009 Home Business Report and announcing winners of the 2009 Home Business Awards. Plenty of reasons to come along!

You can register for the Enterprise Nation Conference here: Register now!

Join us on a Roadtrip

In the build-up to Home Enterprise Day, we're going on a roadtrip! Starting in Scotland and traveling south, I'll be interviewing people in their working homes, talking to policy makers and hosting home business meet-ups every night, at each stop-off point. The end result of the week will be a documentary looking at the rise of home business in the UK. This is where we'll be - please come out and say hello!

*Monday 14th September  -Scotland
*Tuesday15th September - North East (Newcastle)
*Wednesday 16th September - London
*Thursday 17th September - South West (Bristol & surrounds)
*Friday 18th September - West Midlands (Herefordshire & Shropshire)

Enter the Home Business Awards

The Awards will be open in early September with winners announced at the Enterprise Nation Conference on Friday, November 20th. We'll have the same categories this year as last which are:

*Home Business of the Year
*Home Business Couple of the Year
*Young Home Business of the Year (under the age of 30)
*Home Office of the Year
 
Entry is free and you're in with a chance of winning plenty of profile and prizes.

Run your own event

If you'd like to celebrate Home Enterprise Day but unable to join us for the conference in London, why not host your own event. We've prepared a basic sheet for anyone looking for tips on how to spend the day.

Whatever you decide to do, and wherever you'll be, I look forward to celebrating the UK's first ever Home Enterprise Day with you!

I'm happy to announce that as of last night workshifting is now on Facebook! 


The goal for the Facebook page is to have another way to connect with all of you.  I invite you to drop by, share interesting links that you may find, post photos, videos, start discussion threads and have fun. 

We'll be consistently sharing links from around the web that we think may be of interest to you and will be looking for more and more ways to connect with you, providing you the most relevant and useful content as well as a community for everyone that lives outside of the cubicle on a regular basis.

Will you come join us for the ride? Become a fan of workshifting.

Don't forget to join the conversation on Twitter and tag your photos on Flickr with "workshifting" so they'll show up in our stream.

As always we want this to be useful for you so let us know what else you want to see either here or elsewhere?

If you've been hanging out with us workshifters since the launch you probably noticed the Flickr widet on the sidebar.  Previously the only way pictures would show up there was if they were uploaded to the workshifting Flickr account.  That limited our capabilities to involve all of the other workshifters out there taking fun photos of their various working environments, travels, etc.

Today we have updated this widget so now any photo tagged in Flickr with "workshifting" will show up in the Flickr widget.  You can also see all photos tagged "workshifting" if you prefer.

What's next? This is another step to continuing to build our workshifting community.  We want you to actively take pictures of your travels, work environments, office set ups and anything else related to workshifting and tag it in Flickr "workshifting" so the rest of us can see what you're up to.

Of course, the normal bit of please don't post anything that is not directly related to workshifting or is offensive in any nature.

In the coming weeks we will have more announcements as we continue to grow this community.  Some of the stuff we're up to: adding more features to this blog, the workshifting question of the day on Twitter (#workshiftingqotd), more writers, scouring the Internet for other interesting topics related to workshifting, contests and tons more!

Is there something that you want to see?  Something that we're missing?

Please let us know in the comments below.  We want this community to be what you want and need it to be.  Thanks for continuing to join us for this workshifting ride!

Don't forget that you can also follow us over on Twitter...