CISCO Systems operations manager Nicole Tan is glad to be able to work from home.
This is so that she can spend time with her two step-children after they finish school in the evenings.
'Plus I get fantastic home-cooked lunches prepared by my domestic helper,' she said.
The nature of her work and her employer's flexible work schemes have contributed to a work-life balance that has become the envy of many of her friends.
Going by analyst firm Gartner's numbers, four out of every 1,000 workers in Asia Pacific will spend at least one day a week working from home by 2011. That works out to 7.8 million teleworkers, a slight increase from the 6.2 million today.
High office rental and fuel costs are major drivers towards this trend. Other factors include employee demand, as is the case with Nicole, 32.
She looks after sales in Asia at the networking gear maker.
Communication with local staff and overseas managers is done via teleconferences and e-mail on her laptop and an Internet-protocol (IP) phone at home. She goes to the office only two days a week for face-to-face meetings.
Like 400 other colleagues who telecommute, she does not have a fixed office desk space. Teleworkers like her store their belongings in office lockers and work wirelessly from assigned areas for mobile workers called 'mobility desks'.
They can also park themselves in lounges and meeting rooms. Using a 'soft' phone installed in their laptops, they can answer or make phone calls from anywhere in the office over a wireless network. Faxes arrive in their e-mail inbox as an attachment, thanks to unified messaging applications.
Cisco is among a handful of multinational firms here with a large number of telecommuters - its 400 telecommuters represent 40 per cent of its staff who work from home at least two to three days a week.
It joins the ranks of companies like Hewlett-Packard, Procter & Gamble and IBM, which are also big on telecommuting.
'Employees opt for this as they can enjoy work-life balance,' said Tom Cheong, Cisco's managing director in Singapore and Brunei.
Turn problem to opportunity
The scheme, however, did not originate that way. When the company started making some employees in Singapore work from home in 2001, it had only one intention - to cut costs.
The firm had written off some US$2 billion (S$2.9 billion) from acquiring excess real estate and inventory worldwide during the dot.com frenzy. However, what was borne out of necessity became a business opportunity for Cisco.
Today, while other businesses are seeing red over soaring office rentals, Cisco continues to shave 20 to 30 per cent off its office rentals. Total savings are projected to reach US$5 million three years from now.
What's more, its global offices are now a showcase for intelligent workplace designs based on its technologies. Called Cisco Connected Workplace, the programme involves fitting the office with collapsible and configurable furniture which can be torn down and rebuilt in just a few hours to make room for new employees.
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life on September 17, 2008
