Let's use 'telework' to grease economy

One superhighway is jammed and expensive. The other is open and cheap.

So, next time, take the route to work with no choking emissions, no raised middle fingers and no $4 gas.

Sit at your computer and drive straight ahead.

Now that Maryland has built one of the world's best broadband networks, let's use it to grease the economy and cut costs ranging from filling the tank to pollution to road construction to high blood pressure.

Oil at $140 and what's called "telework" were made for each other like migraines and aspirin. Bosses of Maryland, do everybody a favor - maybe even yourselves - and let employees work from home a day or two a week.

"We've found that folks can telecommute and be more productive when they do it," says Malcolm D. Woolf, director of the Maryland Energy Administration. "My perception is that employees are more focused because they're not interrupted by colleagues. They're able to read the big document and get focus time."

Many bosses worry if they can't see people toiling, but this is as outdated as it is benighted. Among computers' many advantages is their ability to measure work accomplished, wherever it is done. Instant messaging ought to satisfy even hovering, neurotic supervisors.

Business groups, especially the Greater Baltimore Committee, need to show more leadership on this. When it comes to telework, business is in danger of being out-innovated by - horror! - government.

Numerous state governments, including Maryland's, are talking about telecommuting options. The Department of Budget and Management has evaluated state jobs with the goal of designating 10 percent of the work force as telecommuting-eligible.

On the federal side, 6 percent of employees - more than 100,000 - already work from home at least part of the time, according to the Office of Personnel Management. The Telework Improvements Act, passed last month by the House, would require the identification of every telework-eligible position and promote telecommuting "to the maximum extent possible without diminishing employee performance or agency operations."

But the biggest gain to be had from telecommuting is from corporations and other private employers (including nonprofits), which make up 80 percent of Maryland's economy.

Four-dollar gas "may be the catalyst that gets the employers who may be on the fence to start looking seriously at it," says Gil Gordon, a New Jersey-based consultant who helps companies design telecommuting programs.