Internet Boom Pave's Way for Telecommuting Surge.

A SIDE from a lot of young millionaires, one of the Internet boom's most direct outgrowths is a severe shortage of qualified employees.

Whenever labor is tight, telecommuting -- working at home for an employer -- surges in popularity. Telecommuting is a great retention and recruitment tool. The flexibility to work at home, usually part-time, is highly appealing to most people.

Home-based work gives people a chance to cut through piles of work with fewer interruptions, to get a respite from a long commute, and to stay close to home for family reasons.

According to a research study prepared by the International Telework Association & Council, or ITAC, almost 20 million people reported working as telecommuters in 1999. The study also found that the number of employees who telecommute has jumped 10 percent of U.S. adults in the past year.

If your business doesn't have a lot of stock options with which to keep and to lure employees, you may want to offer telecommunting -- the poor man's retention and recruitment tool.

Technology makes telecommunting easier than ever before. E-mail and conference calling are old-hat; it's access to broadband, which is better in many residential communities than in urban business centers, that makes the difference. Internet-based technologies that replicate side-by-side collaboration using document-sharing technologies and other innovations are also easier to locate and to use than ever before.

Even if you now attract and retain with stock options, you might decide to offer telecommuting as a way to increase productivity and to keep employees happy.

Consider the following documented benefits of telecommuting from the ITAC study:

* Reduced absenteeism. The survey found that employers can save. $2,086 annually per employee by encouraging telecommunting This is because many teleworkers are able to work part of the day at home before or after they complete personal tasks that otherwise would have required an entire day off.

* Increased employee retention. Many teleworkers surveyed said that working from home is an important consideration when it comes to staying with or leaving an employer. Since many companies spend one-third of an employee's salary to recruit him or her, retaining current staff members can mean average savings of $7,920 per employee in replacement costs. In addition, the opportunity to telecommute can be an attractive lure for potential new hires.

* Enhanced quality of life for employees. More than 57 percent of survey participants were more satisfied with their jobs after starting to work at home. This may be because balancing work and family is so overwhelming for most people. Teleworking gives staff members a sense of empowerment by offering them more control over their schedules. This, in turn, can reduce stress, increase willingness to accept responsibility and improve work attitude.

* Increased productivity. Almost 50 percent of teleworkers believe they are more productive when working at home than when they are in company offices, and another 42 percent feel they are equally as productive Employers can easily quantify productivity jumps by monitoring employee workload before starting a telecommuting program and comparing them to the work employees manage when working from home.

* Positive environmental impact. Telecommuting has a positive effect on our environment by decreasing air and noise pollution and preserving natural resources. The study found that the average teleworker reduces commuting distances by about 1,800 miles a year. Think about the positive impact this has on air quality, traffic congestion and public health.

I've retained a highly skilled member of my staff-by letting her work from home-a few days a week. If I didn't provide this kind of flexibility, she would likely go elsewhere simply because she doesn't want to commute daily into the city. The minor inconveniences her telecommuting presents to our team is far outweighed by her value.

Ruthless Efficiency

A friend of mine used to manage a successful small business in London. About a year ago, he packed it in.

Prior to his departure, a management consultant visited the company and delivered a seminar on efficiency. The speaker encouraged listeners to pick three goals that they wanted to accomplish in their lives and to forget all the others. She said this made setting priorities easy because if you know what your goals are, you'll want everything that you do to move you one step closer to them.

The speaker's words didn't affect my friend the way the company leaders had. hoped. He left the firm to pursue his top three goals. Now he's one if the most efficient people I know. Almost everything he does is focused and purposeful, and he has stopped wasting time on tasks that don't offer payoff.

His ruthless approach to time management sets a good example for people who get bogged down in the details of a home-based business. If you started your own company, chances are one of your goals is to lead a successful business. It's easy to get sidetracked from this vision, however, by the day-to-day tasks that running a home-based venture demands. If your resolution is to be more efficient in 2000, try these tricks.

* Start doing your work 15 minutes later. Spend the first 15 minutes of each day planning. Before taking phone calls, answering e-mail or addressing work-related problems, take 15 minutes to review goals for the day. If you never seem to have enough time to do everything on your list, mark priority items with a star and address tasks related to those items first.

* Set aside phone time. One of the most disruptive pieces of home office equipment is the phone. Answering calls as they come in almost guarantees that your to-do list will remain undone.

* Do more with e-mail. Phone time is not only wasteful because it interrupts workflow, but it is also a time-eater because of the chitchat that comes with it. Move some of these conversations online by confirming project details, appointments and client needs via e-mail. This does not mean you. shouldn't connect with people at all; just look for opportunities to replace some phone time with more efficient e-mail time.

* Review your technology. Take stock of your office equipment and look for some updates that might make your work life more efficient. For instance, if you've put off buying a copy machine but trek to the copy center twice each week, think about buying one now. The savings in your time will probably make such an investment worthwhile.

Alice Bredin is author of the "Virtual Office Survival Handbook" (John Wiley & Sons) and a nationally syndicated columnist.