Today Andrew Millard stops by from across the pond to help launch a new whitepaper concerning smarter commuting as part of the UK's third annual National Commute Smart week.  Andrew is the eCommerce Director of EMEA at Citrix Online.

The daily commute.  It's a thought that can send a chill down the spine of even the cheeriest soul.  Battling congested roads in rush hour, waiting on station platforms for delayed trains and squeezing onto packed buses.

If that's not bad enough, the evenings are starting to get colder and certainly darker, with the clocks going back recently, making the daily commute that bit harder.  

This week the UK's third annual National Commute Smart Week is taking place, with the aim of encouraging workers to reduce or even eliminate their daily commute to improve health, wellbeing and productivity.  

It's an initiative that peaked my interest and I was keen to find out more about the feasibility of introducing smarter, and more flexible, working approaches. So to coincide with Commute Smart Week, we commissioned some consumer research to uncover the real picture of commuting in the UK and pose the question: is there a 'smarter' way to commute?

How do UK workers commute?

The survey found that collectively, British workers spend around 26 million hours every single day commuting. While that works out to be an average of 49 minutes per person, there are one in ten of us who are travelling for a minimum of two hours every day.  

It can be a painful experience and when asked about the biggest frustrations with commuting, being stuck in traffic topped the list, with travelling in the darker winter months and the expense of commuting close behind. One in five Brits were annoyed about wasting time which could be spent more productively.

Given those results, it was no surprise to find that around two-thirds of us Brits want to reduce the time we spend commuting.

So what's the alternative?

It was clear from the research that British workers are frustrated by many aspects of their commute and that there is a real desire to improve or reduce their journeys. The people we surveyed were clear about the benefits of smarter commuting, particularly in achieving a greater work-life balance by reducing the amount of time wasted 'in limbo', neither at work or at home.

Many respondents identified ways smarter commuting could work in practice, such as working flexible hours so they could travel outside of peak hours, and working from home to avoid the commute altogether. Technology was seen as the great enabler, providing the tools to allow workers to connect with their workplace, colleagues and clients and carry out their job from any location.

Is it feasible?

Now I'm not suggesting that every business should rush to adopt smarter working practices just because workers are a bit frustrated with their commute. It's highly likely that businesses are placing even more value on a visible, highly productive and engaged workforce in our competitive and challenging economy.

But taking a more flexible approach, and utilising the widely available and low-cost internet tools that can enable this, could provide the key to businesses acquiring and retaining the best talent, improving staff morale and loyalty, and as a result, maximise productivity of their workforce.

By working together, employers and employees can gain a better understanding of each others' needs, assess the right approaches and test a range of options, which will help to transform the British workplace into a highly productive environment, while serving the work-life balance needs of employees.

You can download a whitepaper, revealing the full results of the Commute Smart research.

Photo by: raindog