The boom in telecommuting’s being driven by soaring gas prices and a sinking economy. Now there’s data showing just how big an impact the practice is having.

A new survey finds that companies wind up winning on two fronts: Productivity and cost containment. More than half of those surveyed cited both increased productivity among offsite workers and lower costs as benefits from the practice.

A new survey of 212 IT managers and CIOs in a wide range of industries by CompTIA research tells the telecommuting tale:

• The majority of respondents (78%) report that some employees within their organizations telecommute, at least part-time.
• Most organizations don’t have a high percentage of full-time telecommuting employees. Most organizations (82%) say that less than 25% of employees telecommute full-time.
• Workers in IT management (41%), field technical support (37%), and administration (35%) most commonly telecommute (part-time or full-time).
• Top benefits of telecommuting to organizations include improved productivity (67%), cost savings (59%), access to more qualified staff (39%), employee retention (37%), and improved employee health (25%).
• Significant challenges of telecommuting to organizations include securing corporate information systems (53%), limiting use of unauthorized and unsupported devices (38%), and controlling personal use of corporate mobile assets (33%).
• To meet challenges of telecommuting, IT departments have tackled issues such as upgrades in network circuits and VPN equipment, expanded security, training, and implementation of new virtualization technologies and applications.

Tags: CompTIA, Telecommuting