Last year Australia watched while ash cloud plumes from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano caused the closure of 20 airports for nearly a week across Europe causing chaotic and major economic loss. While Australian businesses watched as Europe ground to a halt, they may have done well to consider their own business continuity plans as volcanic ash from Chile's Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano has forced the cancellation of more than 300 flights in Australia and New Zealand. Considering the vast expanse of this country, realistically, it's tough for a coach service to get you to that business meeting in a timely manner. Eleven hours on an overnight coach is not anyone's idea of fun - and certainly does not encourage productivity. Experiencing such a crisis may have previously seemed unlikely, our vast and sunburnt country makes it even more important to be prepared for when travel is not possible.

Although travel may be halted, your business doesn't have to encounter delays. Today, you can safely and easily conduct business just as if you are sitting across the room from your contacts or your office desk (if you so happen to be stranded en route home!). Whilst it may feel like the in-person meeting is the best way to get that human touch with customers and colleagues, there is something to be said for not having them wait or prolonging a decision that could inevitably lead to a better outcome for all involved. Think about your competition - just because you can't get to your customers doesn't mean your competition can't. So why let this unfortunate and uncontrollable event delay your business when the access, collaboration and connection tools you need to stay on track is a simple click away?

Want to learn more about business continuity best practices and options? Check out these reports to help guide your business continuity journey:

• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are top IT priorities for 2010 and 2011 - A whitepaper by analyst and research firm, Forrester this looks at how IT decision makers are disaster-proofing their businesses.
  
  
• Emergency Telecommuting - This is a quick-start guide to working well in a crisis - from wherever you are.
  
  
• Business Continuity Guaranteed - How to enable your employees to take the virtual road to work

Photo Credit: rwhgould

The Earth Day festival grounds in Santa Barbara, California, were packed. Big-name corporations and small-town grassroots tabled side-by-side, peddling the same message: with so many easy ways to go green, anyone in any work situation can do something for the environment.

The significance of this idea was not lost on the revelers, who take commitment to environmentalism seriously. Earth Day is Santa Barbara's largest festival, having started four decades ago after the 1969 oil spill (the third largest spill behind Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez). Since then, the movement has only grown as new issues have come to light and as more and more people discovered ways to reduce our impact.

Of these advances, workshifting may be one of the simplest to follow that has immediate benefits for both the individual and the environment. I work at Citrix Online in Santa Barbara, where these advantages of workshifting are well-known. As employees, we appreciate the chance to workshift, for reasons as diverse the workers ourselves. And as residents of Santa Barbara, we recognize our responsibility to cut down on our carbon footprints. Workshifting helps combine these interests, simplifying our obligations to both our jobs and our environment.

Many others in Santa Barbara are well aware of this useful combination. According to the 2005-2009 American Community Survey, close to 7 percent of workers here worked at home. That's more than who took public transportation, walked or biked. It's also three times the national average. In a community that helped start Earth Day, workshifting has taken hold.

This year's Telwork Research Network Study on the benefits of workshifting reveals the whole picture. The study splits the United States into three groups - nation, businesses and individuals - and then analyzes how workshifting supports each. Among the myriad of statistics the researchers produced on saved costs and employee bonuses I found environmental figures that are startling in their reach. The country could:

Reduce greenhouse gases to the equivalent of the entire New York state workforce off the road

• Cut Persian Gulf imports by 46%
• Save 281 million barrels of oil a year
• Reduce road travel by 91 billion miles a year

Clearly, the environment could use a little workshifting.

As our dependency on fossil fuels continues to grow, I can only foresee the practice of workshifting becoming more and more important. The cost of gas will ensure this change occurs; just watch - as the prices climb higher this summer, everyone and their dog will be looking for an alternative way to work. Here in Santa Barbara, we've already been forced to accept that reality. The award for the most expensive gas sold in the country regularly goes to the station closest to me, and the city as a whole currently fights for first place with Honolulu as the most expensive city for gas on average. Coupled with the Earth Day movement, it's no wonder why so many people here workshift.

Help make a difference in your local community and change your commute if you haven't already. And if you start hearing complaints of high gas prices from neighbors, clue them in, too. Can you envision how your local city would be if more people workshifted? How do you think it'd change things?

Photo Credit: Citrix Online

China Business News (CBN) reports that telecommuting offers the greatest potential for carbon emission reductions in China.

Guo Yonghong, chairman of China Mobile Hubei, told an audience of environmental experts, local government officials and company representatives that telecommuting could save 340 million tons of CO2 emissions in 2020. Virtual meetings could save 623 million tons of CO2 annually. By 2030, that could cut commercial aviation emissions by nearly 40 percent. 

It's easy to ignore just how big an impact small changes in how we live can make. 

A joint World Wildlife Fund (WWF) China and China Mobile study published earlier this year shows that China's telecommunications sector cut 48.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2008 and 58.2 million tons in 2009. Those savings nearly match the total 2008 emissions of some countries including Sweden, Denmark or Finland. Lei Hongpeng, senior program officer of WWF China explained that those savings came from strategies such as telecommuting, electronic data interfaces and more efficient logistics.

The study looked at direct savings from 14 of China Mobile's low-carbon information communication technologies (ICTs). These include smart logistics (matching truck deliveries to loads), dematerialization (saving paper and other materials), smart work (smart meetings, and reducing commuting and travel needs) and smart appliances (remotely monitored and controlled for energy savings).

The potential reduction from dematerialization, smart logistics, and smart work amounts to 399 million tons in 2010, 615 million tons in 2020, and 1,298 million tons in 2030.

"The potential savings from smart logistics, smart meetings and smart commuting contribute significantly to global greenhouse gas emission reductions and to China's target of reducing the carbon intensity of its economy by 40 to 45 percent by the year 2020," said Peng Jinxin, former director-general of the Ministry of Environmental Protection's department of policy, laws and regulations.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, if the European Union's 25 (EU-25) participating countries reached 10% telework participation, they would collectively reduce CO2 emissions by 22 million tons. If 50% of employees within the EU25 replaced one in-person meeting with an audio conference, it would save 2 million tons of CO2. And if the EU-25 replaced 20% of travel with a video-conference, the savings would total 22 million tons of CO2. According to EPA.gov, all together, these three simple solutions would save the equivalent of:

• Annual greenhouse gas emissions from 8 million passenger vehicles
• CO2 emissions from 4.6 billion gallons of gasoline consumed
• CO2 emissions from 97 million barrels of oil consumed
• CO2 emissions from 557 thousand tanker trucks' worth of gasoline
• CO2 emissions from the electricity use of 5 million homes for one year
• CO2 emissions from the energy use of 3.6 million homes for one year
• Carbon sequestered by 1.1 billion tree seedlings grown for 10 years
• Carbon sequestered annually by 8.9 acres of pine or fir forests
• Carbon sequestered annually by 396 thousand acres of forest preserved from deforestation
• CO2 emissions from 1.7 billion propane cylinders used for home barbeques
• CO2 emissions from burning 218 thousand railcars' worth of coal
• Greenhouse gas emissions avoided by recycling 14 million tons of waste instead of sending it to the landfill
• Annual CO2 emissions of 10.8 coal fired power plants

Photo Credit: Pierre Marcel

It's 2010. The web is allowing us to collaborate and connect with people at a rate higher than any other time in history and people are becoming more conscious about the earth with the "Green Movement". I am not an expert on green by any means but I have recently done some research on saving gas that I would like to share with you. The workshifting community tends to spend lots of time on planes and on the go in their vehicles so I thought it might be of some interest how you can lower your carbon footprint and save a bit of cash at the same time.

Gas Saving Tips:

#1 Warming Up - It is a common misconception that a vehicle needs to be warmed up for a prolonged period of time. It is really not necessary. Avoid sitting in a running car for extended periods of time and shorten your warm-up times to 30 seconds or less.

#2 Fuel When it's Cool - When fueling your vehicle try to do this during the evening or morning hours when the air is cooler. Gas is denser in cooler weather. I can't give you the science behind it but it has to do with how the pump measures the volume of gas being pumped. Less density = less gas for the same amount of volume.

#3 Don't Whine - When sitting at a stop light don't whine or rev the engine needlessly. This will open the throttle and consume more gas getting you no where.

#4 Electric or Hybrid Vehicles - These vehicles are still about 15-20% more expensive than their gas guzzling equivalents. However, it might be worth looking into if you spend a lot of time in your vehicle. The decreased emissions, cost of gas and possible tax benefits may make it well worth the investment.

#5 Maintenance - Keep your vehicle maintained. Old spark plugs, dirty filters, improperly inflated tires and old oil can cause an engine to decrease it's efficiency by 10% or more. Maintaining a vehicle will not only increase overall efficiency but help maintain resale and trade-in values as well.

#6 Stop Hauling - Don't be that person that never unloads his/her vehicle. Carrying excessive weight will decrease fuel efficiency. Unload your vehicle after shopping trips and save gas!

There are many small things you can do to improve the efficiency of your car but these seem to be the biggest gas guzzlers. Feel free to share your green workshifting tips in the comments!


Photo Credit: Sausyn

Traveling, whether by air, sea or land, truly opens a window to the world. In addition to the natural wonders of the Earth, travelling exposes us to new and different cultures as well as to the new and different ways our own culture operates.

On a recent trip to Seattle [Washington] from my home base of South Florida, I went in search of inspiration and productivity at every corner Starbucks. Unable to connect to any of the available wi-fi networks (a much dreaded reality for any freelance writer, consultant or the like who envisions the world as an office), I retreated to the only spa/salon I could find - in as desperate need of a mani/pedi as of a wired hot spot. Imagine my surprise when I not only realized that the sticker prices of these services were triple what I am accustomed to in South Florida, but also when I was informed that I would be treated to bona-fide organically "green" treatments!  I felt indulged, special and strangely proud of myself for patronizing such an admirable organization. As I read over its literature (Julep hopes to expand, coming to a city near you, soon!) I realized that the terms "green", and "going green" are widely used - yet I was not certain how widely understood?
 
In simple terms, "going green" can be defined as the act(s) of adopting practices that "lead to more environmentally friendly and ecologically responsible decisions and lifestyles, which can help protect the environment and sustain its natural resources for current and future generations"
 
As an independent consultant, my perspective on the gradual switch to a greener existence is very different from that of a large organization or conglomerate. A greener workplace can mean many different things and translate into various behavioral modifications, so I wondered how I could best implement my own measures in my home office...?

1. Transportation - well, this one should be quite easy. My office is 20 feet across from the other rooms in my home. I rarely and barely need to drive into an office or to see clients; but when office duties or client-facing meetings call - I am best served to allocate specific office hours on specific days of the week and maximize that time to cover as many face-to-face meetings as feasible. Consider this: as a workshifter, every appointment or contract you do take is one that you did not take. So you would choose and juggle projects and clients carefully, wouldn't you? In the same way, every trip (by motor vehicle) you do take is one that could be combined or consolidated to produce a trip you don't have to take...


2. Tree Hugging - be they palm trees like I have in Florida or Pines to the north, we have a unique opportunity to please the trees by veering closer to a paper-less existence.
• With the onset of technology, smart phones and a plethora of online organizational tools, the need for hard copy calendaring systems and sticky note portraits is long gone. Although this may take some re-training of your mind if you are a sensual and visual worker who needs to see, feel and write - you may be surprised at the joy you receive from plugging in an appointment or task into your smartphone and having it magically sync with your work laptop or PC, or being able to color code your calendars and appointments... Welcome to the world of mindless, foolproof scheduling and tracking.
• Similarly, long gone is the need for drawers upon drawers of files. Even doctors are going digital nowadays! Create a logical filing system in your 'My Documents' folder, learn how to archive your email and most importantly - invest in a smart backup software and external drive. Most are simple, easy-to-install and affordable. Then, the only file cabinet you need is a fire-proof one in which to store the external drive...
• When you cannot avoid printing, make every effort to print double-sided. You will not only save yourself paper but also have smaller stacks to look at on your desk.


3. Power Struggle -Turn off your monitor/PC/laptop, set them to standby mode after 20 minutes of non-use, or - even better -  unplug! Before you turn any shade of green, BE INFORMED and understand what you're doing and what its effect will be. Did you know that if every notebook sold worldwide in 2006 was on standby 50% of the time... enough power would be saved on an annual basis to provide power to more than 45,000 households...? (citation) was shocked to learn that equipment continues to leech power in the "off mode" when still plugged in. So at night, or when you're away, it's best to "unplug" in more ways than one.


4. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - while these terms have been around as long as I can remember, they have not always been actively practiced. Turn the A/C down or the heat up where you work. Reuse office supplies for as long as they last. Recycle all paper and plastic products and buy recycled wherever it can be found. If your community does not have a recycling program, contact your local waste management authority and demand one! Don't just think of yourself as an office of one, but rather as an army of one on a crusade to better the quality of the earth one less paper copy at a time..

So, no, it isn't easy being green, and it may take a more conscious effort on your part to live and work in a more environmentally friendly fashion, but the planet will thank you and so will many future generations. You may even surprise yourself and discover that a greener life is a cleaner one - in mind, office and spirit, too!

What steps are you/your organization taking/have taken to be greener? What small steps have you adopted to make your life's work more environmentally friendly?


Photo Credit: TheTruthAbout

What the BP Oil Spill and My Grandpa Have in Common

Where the wind comes rushing down "the plain" (also known as Oklahoma), three windmills and a solar panel stand in my grandpa's backyard.  As a self-proclaimed "poor German immigrant," my grandpa uses his "every penny counts" attitude and self-taught engineering skills to build these energy-generating machines.  They power his house, they lessen his environmental impact, and his most valued benefit, they eliminate his electric bill.  "Love many, trust few, always paddle your own canoe" is his mantra (and if I had a dollar for every time he said that to me, I wouldn't have to worry about my electric bill either).

His self-sufficiency through sustainability mentality has never been more practical than now.  As we pass day 65 of the BP oil spill, I believe America, and the rest of the world, now acknowledge the negatives of oil dependency and how it causes environmental and economic devastation.

It's time to re-wire -- the way we work, the way we get around, the way we consume -- all of it needs a positive charge.  Green technology and software that enables mobile work, along with small steps such as recycling, reducing consumption, etc., will enable us to paddle our own canoes and save the environment from unnatural disasters.

And this isn't just about hugging trees and saving whales -- it's about saving the American economy and putting more money on the balance sheet.
 
According to a 2010 Telework Research Network study, If U.S. companies were to implement a workshifting policy, America could:

• Save $23 billion a year in imported oil
• Reduce greenhouse gases by taking the equivalent of almost 10 million cars off the road
• Cut Persian Gulf imports by 37%
• Achieve 27% of the nation's 2020 goal for GHG reduction from light cars and trucks
• Prevent over 95,000 traffic injuries and deaths and save over $11 billion in accident costs
• Lower highway maintenance costs almost $2 billion a year

Additionally, workshifting could save employees between $2,000 and $6,800 per year in gas and other commuting expenses.  I don't know about you, but I'll gladly take that 2K and skip the commute, thank you very much.

All in all, my grandpa's lessons of self-sufficiency and sustainability, along with the negatives of dependency on oil, make me realize that a new form of energy and work is necessary, now.  We can't wait, because nothing is slowing down -- not the fast pace of business and, sadly, not the oil spewing into the Gulf.

Do you workshift to A) reduce your environmental impact, B) create more work-life balance, C) save money for you and your company,  or D) all of the above?

Workshifting has appeals for a number of reasons. One of these is the sense that workshifting is a greener choice than working in a regular office setting. But is that really the case? Is workshifting truly a greener work option than the traditional regular office?

It turns out to be a little more complicated than you might think at first. Depending on how you are workshifting, you may be contributing to more resource consumption, rather than less. A story on The Environment Report (NPR) recently looked at this issue.

If you are a workshifter, does your company maintain a regular office space for you, as well? Is that space being heated and cooled and lighted whether you are there or not? If you are away from that office a significant portion of your time, but the company is still maintaining that space for you, you may be increasing the footprint of your resource consumption. However, the larger the company you work for, the less significant this is, because you represent an increasingly small fraction of their total workforce, and the company is going to have a more consistent level of consumption regardless of your contributions or savings.

But consider the equipment and materials necessary for workshifting. If you have a home office as well as a regular office, what items are duplicated at each location? Do you have a printer at each place? Or even a separate computer for the company office and the home office? Or is your office your laptop, and it comes with you at all times?

Job sharing and hot desks are other strategies a company can use to turn workshifting into actual green strategies. In these instances, a company only needs the resources for one person, although more than one uses those resources, just at different times.

Even in a milder workshifting scenario, while the company may not realize the savings directly, a worker who workshifts even a few days a month is saving quite a bit of energy from the commuting they aren't doing. Working from home just 3 days a month instead of a 30 mile round-tip commute saves over 1000 miles of travel and 43 gallons of gas (for a single passenger commuter getting 25 MPG) and nearly 850 pounds of CO2 emissions as well.

How significant is the green factor in your workshifting choices?


Photo Credit: Swanksalot

Between the current New England flooding and the Snowpocalypse in the Mid-Atlantic States earlier this year, 2010 has brought to light the need to remain productive despite weather. Today's post is by Matt Martin, who is Manager, Technology and Services at Ingram Marine Group based in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also a member of The ITK Group, an organization that helps small businesses and nonprofits understand next generation tech and how they can apply it to their organization.

In January and February we were all watching what was going on in the Mid-Atlantic states weather patterns and the amount of snowfall on the Washington DC/Baltimore area was astounding. You know that when an event gets its own Facebook page, its a pretty big deal.

For kids its nice, you get out of school, hang out with friends, play outside in the snow. But for adults, the work doesn't stop. Pay me now, or pay me later. Lots of companies have spent a lot of money to plan for disasters, but most of their planning has revolved around the loss of a facility in the event of a natural disaster. This line of planning got us thinking.

What happens when the facility is fine, but your employees simply cannot get to your building?

Its business as usual for your customers across the country and around the world. But if your people cannot make it to the office, their productivity will slow to a crawl. Typically businesses will supply some employees with laptops so they can work remotely but this is often a small subset of your workforce. Even with these laptops the standard way of connecting back to the office is often via a VPN (virtual private network) that usually requires some type of licensing, or has a limited capacity. IT typically scales these solutions based on current use. So I might have 300 employees but typical VPN load is 10 to 30 concurrent connections at one time so they will size their VPN solution to handle that many connections at once.

In the event of a snowpocalypse or a swine flu outbreak, what are your options?

Simply buying enough VPN connections for all of your employees just doesn't make sense. What you can do is think about deploying systems that are nimble or flexible right out of the box, or go with a solution that could be implemented quickly, at a limited cost.

There are several options, here are three that we have found effective:

SaaS Tools
When I think scalable and nimble I first think of Software as a Service applications (SaaS). These tools are a good example of day-to-day business tools that are also very conducive to workshifting.

These applications are typically hosted at the service providers data center and they are often accessed by a simple web browser. The key driver with these applications is that they are hosted outside of your business which means the service provider has already thought through how to make access to their applications as easy as possible. By using SaaS, your employees already know how to access their data so in the state of an emergency their learning curve is very short. The number of really inexpensive to free services that are being provided today is truly amazing.

A few examples:

• Google Apps - Google Apps is a hosted service that provides email, calendar, basic documents, video chat, and others. Google Apps is traditionally slanted towards smaller businesses but they have had some recent wins with larger companies.
• Highrise CRM - Made by 37signals, Highrise is a drop dead easy tool for managing your businesses contacts and your communications with those contacts. Elegant and thoughtful features make this tool a joy to use.

Citrix GoToMyPC
GoToMyPC by Citrix could be a happy medium for a lot of organizations. The deployment is simple, and the cost at $19.95 per month per user is hard to beat to give your employees an easy to use and secure remote access system. Also, the connectivity doesn't need a VPN solution so it can scale easier than a traditional VPN.  The premise is pretty easy. You sign up for GoToMyPC, no real client install needed, and the system creates an SSL VPN on the fly. The SSL encryption secures the traffic between your home PC and your work PC.  Once the connection is established you can have full access to the desktop on your system at work. This really aids in productivity because you are essentially sitting in front of your system so you are familiar with the tools at hand. 

Microsoft to the Rescue 
For better or worse, when a lot of enterprises think software they think Microsoft. Microsoft is often considered to be strictly on premise software but they have recently come out with some SaaS offerings of their own and they have some nice tools to make working out of the office easier. The drawback to their nonSaaS tools are that they can be technically complex to setup, so do your planning plenty in advance to get these up and running and tested.
A couple of their tools that are specifically designed to support mobile use are Microsoft Office Groove and a new feature in Windows 7 called Direct Access.

Microsoft Office Groove - Groove is essentially a peer-to-peer software tool that allows you to setup an online workspace and then share documents within that workspace. Behind the scenes, Groove replicates the data that has been placed in the workspace between the computers of everyone who has been invited. This gives you the flexibility to go offline and work on your documents, then go back online and sync your changes with the team. See how Microsoft used Groove and SharePoint to support caregivers during Katrina.
 
Direct Access - Direct Access is a new tool that Microsoft released as part of Windows 7. Essentially Direct Access will allow you to drop your laptop onto the internet anywhere and then your machine will automatically create a secure connection back to the home office. Its an end users nirvana but the technical requirements (needs Windows 7 and 2008 Server R2) could make this a challenge for IT to setup and deploy.

So what do you think? Any snowpocalypse or flooding stories you would like to share?

Photo Credit: ndutzan

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I hadn't given much thought to the overall impact telecommuting can have on the environment until I hit the "Google Search" button in my browser window. 

Wow - results galore! Apparently I'm a little behind on this issue. While most articles highlight the environmental benefits of telecommuting from home, others challenge this widely-accepted opinion.

The Environmental Benefits Argument

• By working from home, you eliminate the commute, reduce emissions of pollutants and save in energy and petroleum consumption.  

In The Green Book, authors Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas Kostigen report that workers commute an average of 10,000 miles per year and consume 67 billion gallons of gas. Telecommuting reduces vehicle miles traveled per year by more than 35 billion and saves almost 2 billion gallons of gas.

That obviously also reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

In the 2008 "Smart 2020" report, the Climate Group for the Global e-Sustainability Initiative found that virtual meetings and flexible work arrangements could reduce 70-130 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. (The study was conducted by international management consultants McKinsey & Company and outlines the many ways the tech industry can reduce emissions - telecommuting was at the top of the list.)

The Environmental Damages Argument

• Many telecommuters end up driving just as much as their office counterparts, running errands or driving to lunch meetings.

• Employees also have to equip and power their work area, and often end up duplicating what's also shared at the company office. ("Does telecommuting help really the environment?"

Arpad Horvath, an engineering professor at UC Berkley has been researching the environmental impact of working from home, and advocates taking into consideration all the resources used while telecommuting. While telecommuting may lower the amount of carbon dioxide released into the environment, the "extra electricity used by dedicated home offices and electronics meant that telecommuters produced more nitrous oxide and methane."

Horvath and his research team have developed a web-based tool that can help people track the environmental impact of their telecommuting. The online calculator asks data about use of transportation and electricity, and then it determines the type and amount of emissions generated.

I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this issue. While I agree that it's important to take into consideration all resources used while telecommuting, I also think it's a little unrealistic to assume that office workers do not run errands over lunch or drive to lunch meetings. On the other hand, I agree with the statement that teleworkers are duplicating the power that's being supplied in their offices at home. Also - as Workshifters, we do a considerable amount of traveling, which likely wouldn't be the case (at least as much) if we were office based.

What do you think?

Photo Credit: Atwater Village