Telecommuting officially Good (gas prices still Bad)

The Journal of Applied Psychology has officially sanctioned telecommuting as a Good Thing, and they’ve got 20 years worth of research to back it up.

“Our results show that telecommuting has an overall beneficial effect because the arrangement provides employees with more control over how they do their work,” said lead author Ravi S. Gajendran. “Autonomy is a major factor in worker satisfaction and this rings true in our analysis. We found that telecommuters reported more job satisfaction, less motivation to leave the company, less stress, improved work-family balance, and higher performance ratings by supervisors.”

They define telecommuting as

“an alternative work arrangement in which employees perform tasks elsewhere that are normally done in a primary or central workplace, for at least some portion of their work schedule, using electronic media to interact with others inside and outside the organization.”

A couple other interesting tidbits:

• Roughly 45 million people telecommuted last year, up from 41 million in 2003.
• The average age of a telecommuter is 39.

Imagine. 45 million people just waiting to hear about coworking :)
Read the complete press release.