Teleworkers of the '90s still need office space.

Employers are sending their workers home, whole departments at a time. Whether you call it the virtual office movement, teleworking or mobile working - terms that refer to alternative office situations - the exodus from the traditional corporate workplace is expanding the number of telecommuters and home workers every day.

According to a new study by Link Resources Corporation, roughly 33 percent of the American workforce, or about 43 million Americans, now consists of home office users, up from just 21 percent in 1988; and the homeworker population is predicted to continue growing at about 15 percent a year. Although self-employed workers are the largest segment of the homeworker universe (29 percent), telecommuters - corporate employees who work at home at least part time - are the fastest-growing segment, numbering more than 7.6 million.

"Typically, employers find that telecommuters' productivity exceeds that of non-telecommuters by 10 percent to 20 percent," reports Jack Nilles, author of Making Telecommuting Happen. However, telecommuters and indeed all teleworkers (location-independent workers) have many transitional adjustments to make before they can be truly more effective than office workers who have on-site access to corporate support.

Chicago consultant Beverly Addante of Telecommuting Work believes "People will be using a combination of the home office and something remote (a telecenter, satellite office or corporate office)."

For many teleworkers the ideal complement to their home or virtual office is provided by business centers (also known as executive suite firms), which are now available in nearly every U.S. city and throughout the world. These firms provide teleworkers with top-quality services and facilities on a part-time as well as a full time basis. The services are highly-personalized and can replace lost corporate support, enabling telecommuters to continue to function efficiently and professionally.

Business centers give teleworking clients a prestigious address, professional telephone answering and a base of operations. The services offered are highly flexible and tailored to help clients save time because everything is provided under one roof. Importantly, they are a reliable, convenient link to the technology that clients either don't have and don't want to own, or can't carry around (such as E-mail, color printing, binding, data storage, data scanning and videoconferencing). They also help accommodate the off-hours requirements of those doing business across national and international time zones.

According to Mike Takagawa, vice president of marketing and sales for HQ Business Centers, "We've long sought to provide highly-personalized service to our clients. Now we're adding value by establishing alliances with service industry partners that, in exchange for the volume we offer, will allow us to provide big discounts on desirable new services."

Successful telecommuting doesn't just happen," says Gil Gordon, publisher of Telecommuting Review. "It has to be set up right to work." Fear of the "no escape workscape" haunts many displaced corporate workers who find themselves in their den or car late at night trying to figure out the best way to print a color presentation... yesterday.

The New Workscape

As millions of workers around the globe transform parts of their homes into work spaces, the familiar corporate business office is becoming less familiar. Lavish corner offices denoting status, giant board rooms, floor after floor of exterior offices and interior cubicles filled with full-time workers all are vanishing.

They are being replaced by modular space configurations that house part-time workers. Michael Bell, director of corporate real estate at Dun & Bradstreet, says "We're redefining the office from a dedicated territory to an 'office hotel' and setting up a club atmosphere with 'touchdown' workspaces (spaces used by others as well), 'phone booths' (small workspaces along a wall for use between meetings) and 'personal harbors' (cockpit-like work stations with a work surface, place for storage and a door)."

"A lot of companies - IDS, AMEX, Xerox, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard - are creating the 'cave and commons' atmosphere, which is a combination of private space and team space, separated only by a door," Bell says. "An executive can work quietly for a few hours, then open the door and roll his chair outside a few feet for a brainstorming session with team members. It's very efficient."

The movement away from the traditional full-time corporate office can be attributed to a convergence of socio-economic, demographic and technological changes: e.g., the increasing number of dual-income families, the enactment of environmental laws like the Clean Air Act of 1990 (which mandates pollution reduction generated by commuters) and escalating real estate costs. Technological advances, such as lower-cost lap-top computers, high-speed modems and cellular phones, make teleworking feasible.

Fueled by widespread corporate downsizing, the movement has created tens of thousands of first-time telecommuters. Many are relying on business center providers and hybrid satellite offices to take up the slack and put back lost amenities as they strive to adjust to homeworking and mobile working.

IBM has institutionalized the non-traditional office concept with its first-of-a-kind pilot warehouse office project in New Jersey. Workers clock in and out of the no-frills facility for short work periods. "Mobility is a new way of doing business," says IBM's National Mobility Project Manager, Andrea J. Cheatham. "We want people to work wherever they want to work." She sees "rapid change in the work environment worldwide over the next two to five years, with the 'virtual' worker tied to information, not to an office."

Feedback from the 2.5 years IBM has been involved with alternative office strategy tells IBM that "78 percent of their people feel more productive now; and productivity levels this year are up 10 percent versus 4 to 6 percent last year," according to Cheatham. A pilot telecommuting project conducted several years ago by a large U.S. insurance company also confirmed that the single highest value to the employer is a more effective and better motivated workforce.

Sean Conneallan, operations manager of the Office of New Productivity for XEROX, cites several reasons his company is deploying lap-top technology to its sales force: "to give salespeople flexibility, make them more responsive to customers and allow them to convert non-productive commuting time to productive time."

Not only will this "boost productivity," it will "reduce facilities costs, i.e. reduce both rate and volume costs, which in combination can be significant," Conneallan says. Fortune 500 corporations that are big property owners are looking to save hundreds of millions in real estate costs (about 25 percent of their assets).

Pros and Cons for Teleworkers

The advantages of the virtual office movement for organizations are clear and desirable. Many employees are also embracing the change. For them the advantages are a more autonomous, flexible and empowered way of working that helps them balance their work and home lives.

Yet successful implementation of the "anytime, anywhere" work concept takes time. In an effort to manage the transition, IBM has developed an 8-week process that starts with executive commitment, includes analysis, education (training plus a national desk hotline), implementation and evaluation.

"The virtual office worker will catch on like a flash fire, especially in the communications industries," says Michael Dainard, author of "Breaking Free From Corporate Bondage" and a telecommuting instructor at NYU's School of Continuing Education. Yet, he maintains, "It's not for everyone."

Bridging the Gap

For the telecommuter, allaying fear of change, replacing lost amenities and providing much-needed support during the transition and beyond is a genuine concern. HQ Business Centers, the world's largest business center firm and much more that just a provider of office space, is running parallel to the telecommunications industry in pioneering the transition to the virtual workplace.

Business centers are "very good for people who can't or shouldn't work at home," says telecommuting authority Gil Gordon. "They fill a niche for those whose temperament or environment or physical space is not appropriate."

A sales representative for one of HQ's clients - a giant in the technology field that has sent home its workforce - has six children and no desirable workspace at home. His manager made a special arrangement for him with HQ that he hopes will "last until he can build a soundproof room in the basement."

For teleworker and road warrior Scott Matheis, an estate and business planning representative for The Prudential, HQ's address and support are critical. "Even though my company is well-known, clients expect me to have an established business address," he explains. "Most of my creative work is done at home. I get up, turn on the lights and the coffee, boot the cat and kick the computer; but when I'm on the road, it's a tremendous benefit for me. I use HQ to take messages and assemble reports. They have the same people all the time, so it's like having my own staff."

Joy Rolfsen, sales manager of an HQ Center in Cincinnati, sees the free access that HQ clients get in every Center throughout the world as a big benefit. HQ also offers corporate clients the use of multiple centers with just a single point of contact. "HQ's Corporate Account Managers serve as real estate agents, enabling clients to get specs, negotiate arrangements for several centers at once and add on new centers with one call," says Rolfsen.

In the ten years she has been with HQ, she adds, "Client needs have changed a great deal. Faxes replaced the telex, and desktop publishing flourished. Today, HQ is serving three basic categories of users - traditional, baby boomers and the 'X' generation. While traditional users still want a full-time private office, boomers travel more and stress a need for telecommunications. The jury is still out on what will be needed most by the 'X' generation."

HQ Centers routinely survey clients to determine their needs and strive to implement the suggestions. Annette Reizburg, owner of six HQ Centers in Florida says "We have home worker clients sending us rough drafts they've done on their computer, asking us to 'make it beautiful and send it Federal Express.' We E-mail back the finished document so they can store it."

In Washington D.C., HQ Center owners Tom Lott and Gordon McClure are setting up a 24-hour lounge for clients who want evening and weekend access.

In the words of Dun & Bradstreet's Mike Bell, who is writing a book on the virtual office, "Telecommuting is now taking off like a rocket... growing exponentially. It's a fundamental business strategy." As technology continues to propel the virtual office movement, vast numbers of nomadic teleworkers will be able to readily perform most "office work" from a suitcase - everywhere, all the time. Among the questions that remain: How can the change be made as painless as possible? "If the everywhere, all-the-time office is the desert, HQ is the oasis," says HQ's Mike Takagawa.