Ms. Kanter writing for Harvard Business has some interesting policy ideas:
Stay Home and Work
ROSABETH MOSS KANTER THE CHANGE MASTER
President Obama, here is a deceptively simple action item to put on your agenda for business growth, working families, and a green future: Make it the norm for everyone to work at home at least one day a week. That single step could raise productivity, save energy, decrease pollution, reduce traffic congestion, cut household expenses, increase quality of family life, and keep educated women in the work force.
Workers of the world, go remote!
During this time of economic crisis and reinvention of global capitalism, one of the things crying out for reinvention is the rigid workplace of the last century. It is amazing in the digital age that most work is still associated with industrial age work rhythms and the symbolic chains that tie workers, knowledge and otherwise, to fixed locations. Flexible workplaces with flexible hours and days are long in coming.
Many U.S. cities have become commuter nightmares as urban sprawl sends people across longer distances in their cars every week day. According to the 2008 U.S. Census estimates, 84 percent of the U.S. population lives within 363 metropolitan areas that spill over central city boundaries and, in some cases, over state lines. Jobs within central business districts have been declining, while jobs outside a ten-mile ring have been growing. Vehicle miles traveled have increased twice as fast as population growth.
The daily commute to work has high costs in time, aggravation, fuel consumption, and pollution. If it became a staggered commute of four days a week for everyone, then perhaps 20 percent of the traffic could be gone, vanished, poof, just like that.
. . .
To reinvent the work place, we need public officials to put the infrastructure and permission in place, companies to start the change process, and people to learn how to work together with new norms. With Stephanie Khurana, founder of several high-tech companies and now the flexible consulting firm, Higher Aims, I want to start a dialogue about etiquette for the flexible workplace. Let's do it with the time we are saving and the energy we are conserving by not going into the office one day a week.
View full article: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/kanter/2009/04/stay-home-and-work.html
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