Teleworking Emerging as Key Business Continuity Strategy

We've spoken a fair deal over the past week about health. Let's put that aside for now and return to a discussion that is near and dear: teleworking. It was interesting to see the following article in Continuity Central suggesting that in addition to the usual reasons cited for adopting teleworking (i.e. to ease congestion, greater ability to maintain a life-work balance, etc.), teleworking is now emerging as an important component within an organizational business continuity strategy:

ITAC is promoting telework as a key business continuity tool. At the conference ITAC stated that “Telework enables an organisation’s employees to continue working when faced with many disaster-related interruptions, be they man made or natural, by using current communications and computer technologies to work from home, on the road, or at a client’s office, simply anywhere.”

It is undeniable, teleworking has indeed shed it's initial tag as being a fad into something that is more substantial. In fact, the degree to which teleworking is currently being adopted may only signal the beginning of a much larger phenomenon, as pointed out in this article in the Guardian:

"Under the surface, we suspect teleworking is a much bigger iceberg than the tip would suggest, as current statistics don't take into account people who telework for half-days and maintain regular work in the office," Lyons says. "We are also interested in discovering how far teleworking has penetrated into the practices of blue-collar workers, as it has previously been seen as a white-collar activity. We anticipate recording dramatic increases."