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The Rise of Telecommuting

86% of workers say working from home makes them more productive

Both employees and employers cite benefits from telecommuting

As technology has evolved, it’s become easier and easier for people to work remotely. The number of people who don’t go into the office—instead working from home, a different city, or even a different country—has grown in the U.S. by 140 percent over the past 15 years.

Telecommuters cite a number of reasons why they’d rather work from home, with 86 percent say it makes them more productive. Other reasons include it is less stressful and less expensive.

Full-time telecommuters save more than $4,000 each year on commuting costs, food (buying lunch and coffee), tax breaks, and professional clothing upkeep. It’s also a time-saver. The average full-time telecommuter gains back the equivalent of eleven workdays every year by not having to drive to their job.

Telecommuters say all these benefits make them less likely to look for another job. 76 percent say they would be more willing to stay with their current employer if they could work flexible hours.

March 1 through March 7 is Telecommuter Appreciation Week and businesses are also counting the benefits of having some employees work from home.

Their overhead—leases, utilities, and supplies—are often less. Employees generally take fewer sick days because their overall health is improved, and software like Skype and GoToMeeting can save companies from having to pay for travel expenses.

Workers who telecommute are almost twice as likely to work more than 40 hours a week as non-telecommuters—53 percent compared to 28 percent for non-telecommuters. 36 percent of employees would choose the option to telecommute over getting a raise and 37 percent of technology professionals would even take a ten percent pay cut if they could work from home.

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.