The cynical bastard in me says that this Press Release is just a way for TrueCareers to drive traffic, as I've never heard of their site, but what the hell, they bring up an interesting point!

August 14, 2003 14:14

84 Percent of Employees Say Telecommuting Option Is Important When Looking For a New Job
When looking for a new job, the ability to work from home, or telecommuting, is a top priority among the vast majority of employees. That's the finding in a new survey by TrueCareers, the leading online job board for finding professional, degreed candidates quickly and easily.

Part-Time Telecommuting
TrueCareers is onto something here though. The numbers bear out this trend.
By 2010, over half of U.S. wage earners will work more than two days a week outside the office, says the Sulzer Infrastructure Services firm in London. Currently, 28 million people "telecommute" under official company policies-up from only 4 million in 1990-and millions more "telework" unofficially one or more days a week. And this trend will gain momentum, as affordable broadband Internet access and mobile technologies become even more widely used, says Toni Kistner, managing editor of Net.Worker, a division of Network World magazine. "The technology has steamrolled ahead, making it cheaper and easier to work from anywhere," she says. But don't expect telecommuting to become a full-time phenomenon.

As a person who manages 2 remote employees, I can attest to this trend being a stellar employee retention tool! I have been able to keep a superb web developer and another all around brilliant employee by allowing them to work from home, in 2 different states! Granted, this is not for everyone, and not all employees have the discipline to work from home, nor is everyone equipped to handle the isolation. Nevertheless, there are more advantages with this strategy than disadvantages.

Here's an interesting IT World article on managing remote employees.