A year in, two programs are seeing good results
It’s been a year since we’ve checked in on Georgia. The state’s on our radar for two reasons: Metro Atlanta suffers some of the worst traffic congestion in the country, and Gov. Sonny Perdue got elected in 2002 in part by promising that one quarter of the state’s 100,000 employees would be teleworking by 2005.
The Governor’s Work Away program hit a bump or two since then, but is generally a success. Only 1,500 state employees are teleworking, but 20,000 (20%) are participating in either telework, or flexible or condensed work schedules, says Derrick Dickie, the state’s deputy director of communications.
“This is a priority of the Governor’s; he’s committed to getting state employees off the roads during peak hours. He wants to see state employees spending more time with their families and less time in their cars,” Dickie says.
Since the governor made so much telework noise during the election, some complain that the governor’s performed a bit of a bait-and-switch by passing flextime off as telework (see editorial link below).
But that’s silly. Success in Atlanta is getting employees off the roads during peak congestion, not counting telework heads. And now that the state’s fixed the glitch that was keeping its telework numbers low, they’ll begin climbing.
In implementing telework, Work Away ran up against what’s called a gratuities clause, which requires agencies to set parameters for paying for telework equipment and services. The process took several months, but was completed in July.
Like in Austin, Georgia state employees use their personal PCs and broadband connections to telework. The state supplies remote access software (in this case Citrix) and help desk support.
The other Georgia program marking a one-year anniversary is the Clean Air Campaign’s Telework Leadership Initiative (TLI). The program set out to establish telework pilots in private sector companies, providing $10,000 in free training and staff time reimbursements for each.
“Oh, Atlanta is happening big time,” telework consultant Elham Shirazi says. “We expected to get six or eight applicants, but ended up with 20, from the public, private and non-profit sectors. In the end, we were able to able to meet the needs of 17.”
GE and the Georgia Technical Authority are among them. “These programs are just shining,” Shirazi says. “Many started out with 40 or 50 teleworkers, and have since doubled that. And they aren’t just working one or two days a week. Many are working three and four.”
Why is it going so well?
“The remote access infrastructure in these organizations was already there, and it was so well built. Once we added telework, it just flew,” Shirazi says.
