Most obvious are the cost savings that come with cutting energy use. But according to a recent survey, upper management is also seeing positive effects in other areas — for example, 47% of execs believe going green can help their companies attract and retain employees, according to a recent survey by Buck Consultants.

Also, 12% of HR pros say green initiatives at their companies have increased employee productivity, according to a 2009 Society of Human Resource Management study. That’s up from 6% last year.

More than 60% of companies have adopted the goal of reducing environmental impact, according to the Buck Consultants survey. The most popular changes companies have made:

• 78% have used teleconferencing to cut back on business travel
• 77% have put HR and benefits documents online, rather than printing them
• 76% promote a reduction in paper use
• 68% have implemented wellness programs
• 57% offer telecommuting opportunities, and
• 52% help employees find carpool partners.

A large chunk of workers would accept a lower salary in exchange for the opportunity to work from home, according to a recent survey by Citrix Online. About 21% of respondents said they’d take a 5% pay cut if they could telecommute one or two days a week.

In these days of limited staffing budgets, that could give employers some option for cutting wages. It could also be a way to attract talent when you have little room for salary negotiations.

Some other findings from the survey:

• 75% of employees want the freedom to work remotely.
• 56% have never been able to telecommute.
• Managers’ most common arguments against telecommuting include: Job duties demand office attendance (cited by 38% of managers), remote work hurts relationship-building (19%) and productivity will decline if employees work from home (15%).

As employees worry about a swine flu outbreak, companies wonder how they can help employees stay safe while keeping business running. What can HR do?

One solution experts recommend: Get as many employees as possible ready to work from home.

Companies with a  solid telecommuting plan are a step ahead in handling swine flu and other disease outbreaks, says Chuck Wilsker, president and CEO of The Telework Coalition in Washington, D.C.

The benefit is two-fold. First, the biggest key to keeping contagious diseases out of the workplace is for sick employees to stay home. But many employees are reluctant to miss work, especially in a time when jobs are disappearing.

Also, managers with short-handed staffs may pressure employees to come in as much as possible. Having telecommuting capabilities in place makes sure sick employees can work without putting others in danger.

Second, companies should consider cases where an outbreak forces offices to close, says Wilsker. Letting employees work remotely will ensure that at least some business is being done.

HR should work closely with IT to develop a plan. You may need to:

• Take a survey to find out who’s already equipped to work at home. Most importantly, ask what type of computer, software and Internet connection they have.
• Provide access to important documents and data through a password-protected Web page or a virtual private network (VPN).
• Help remote employees communicate with each other, for example by providing a directory of e-mail addresses or getting workers set up with instant messaging software.

More news and information about swine flu is available from the Center for Disease Control.

But Congress seems to be taking advantage of the widespread disdain for bosses and execs to introduce legislation that would expand telework opportunities for at least one group, federal employees.

The 2009 Telework Improvements Act, offered by a bi-partisan group of congressional reps (Reps. John Sarbanes, D-Md., Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Gerald Connolly, D-Va.) would force the Office of Personnel Management to develop a uniform, government-wide telework policy.

It also would compel agencies to allow eligible employees to use the alternative work arrangement for at least 20% of their hours during a two-week period.

The bill’s sponsors are positioning  telework as good governance and beneficial to the environment and workers’ quality-of-life issues.

They’ve  also identified telework as a great recruitment and retention tool.

Sponsors cite a drastic reduction in auto trips and improvements in operations continuity in the post-9/11 era as among the benefits of telework.

The legislation would require agencies to designate a telework managing officer and boost training for employees and supervisors.  It also would give teleworkers greater protection against punitive treatment from managers.

Sens. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, are expected to introduce a companion bill in the Senate on Thursday.

“There is everything to gain by significantly expanding telework in the federal sector, and nothing to lose,” said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

Could the same be said for your organization?

Some experts in telework say that the big obstacle to telework is a matter of trust on the part of managers. Studies of telework consistently show that it boosts morale and productivity. So why don’t bosses like it?

The folks at ITBusinessEdge.com are offering a free calculator — really a few Excel spreadsheets with built-in formulas — that can help you figure out if a program’s worthwhile.

Well, it’s sort of free. You have to be willing to give up some basic info to get a site membership and download the calculator.

The tool’s based on a  business model where employees who previously worked at your facility now work at home on a full-time basis, with only occasional visits to the office.

The biggest saving: space. This kicks in only if you have eight to 12 off-site workers, which will save about 2,000 square feet of space, the smallest parcel that can be sublet.

But as noted here before, the big advantage is retention, recruitment, morale and productivity — all of which get a big boost by offering flexible work arrangements.

And in this day and age of wage freezes and layoffs, all of those things can add up to big savings for the bottom line.

That’s the conclusion of a recent study by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Researchers interviewed employees at a mid-size company that was starting to offer telecommuting.

The results: As the number of teleworkers increased, employees who stayed in the office were more likely to be dissatisfied with their jobs and leave the company.

Why is that? Experts point to four common mistakes that lead to loss of loyalty among non-telecommuters:

1. Office employees do all the work. When something needs to be done, it’s easiest for a supervisor to ask someone in person. But remind managers with telecommuting staff that work still needs to be spread around equally.
2. Telecommuters get more freedom. Many office workers resent the fact that some co-workers get to work with little supervision while they’re stuck with a “hands-on” manager.
3. Other employees never see teleworking peers. Many savvy companies offer telecommuting arrangements with a catch: Employees working from home still have to come to office regularly. Otherwise, teamwork can start to break down.
4. People don’t talk anymore. One important thing to remember: Don’t let telecommuting ruin co-worker communication. IT must find the best ways for office workers and their home-based counterparts to communicate effortlessly.

For some firms, it even reaches a point where top performers leave for competitors that offer a telecommuting option. That’s the situation HR manager and controller Tina Robinson was face with — until she found a way to solve the problem.

Her story:

When a few top performers announced they were leaving, we wanted to know why. Some said they were headed for employers that offered telecommuting, a benefit that fit well with the employees’ lifestyles (such as becoming new parents).

We had considered telecommuting for some positions and for employees who showed they could work independently, but not all of our managers supported the idea.

They felt the employees would become too isolated and out of touch with what was happening in the workplace. But maybe there was a compromise that would work.

Come in one day

On an experimental basis, we used telecommuting for a couple of positions – with the stipulation that the employee had to come into work one day a week.

That day was typically used partly for meetings and other tasks that normally worked better when done face-to-face. At the end of a set period, we evaluated the system and found that nearly everyone liked it.

The managers liked the keep-in-touch aspect, and employees didn’t mind coming in once a week.

Now, we’re ready to expand the plan to cover several other positions. Best of all, we’ve had no key employees leave for a company that offers telecommuting.

(Tina Robinson, controller, University Park, IL)

1. Productivity drops and doesn’t go back up. There may be a transition period where telecommuters learn to be as productive at home as they were in the office. But if it lasts more than a few weeks, the arrangement is probably not the best fit.
2. They don’t answer messages. One caveat of letting employees work from home is often that they’re required to be available at all times during the work day to answer phone calls, IMs and e-mails. If the employee frequently won’t respond — and doesn’t have a good excuse — that’s a bad sign.
3. They respond, but it just doesn’t sound right. Crafty home-based slackers have started using computer programs (like this one) to hide the fact that they’re away from their desks. These applications let users create general, automatic responses to e-mails that come through their in-boxes.
4. Initiative goes out the window. It’s common for ambitious employees to become complacent once they’re no longer in the office all day. But home-based workers should still be expected to willingly take on new responsibilities and do more than just the bare minimum.

• Take care of household chores before you start working. That’ll help minimize distractions throughout the day. This is also a good way to use the time that’s saved by not having to commute.
• Stick to a schedule. If you get in the mindset that the work day begins and ends at specific times, it’ll be easier to focus than if you have no boundaries between work and home. It’ll also be easier for bosses and co-workers to contact you if they know your routine.
• Try a different location. Employees who have trouble getting things done in their homes sometimes report better results when they work in a public spot, like a coffee shop or library.
• Consider installing a separate business phone line. That way you can ignore calls that come in to your personal line, since you know they aren’t work-related.
• Indulge in your distractions — when you’re on a break. Scheduling a lunch break when you’re home is just as important as when you’re in an office.

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.