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As long ago as the nineteenth century, people were telecommuting. While the term wasn’t coined until almost 100 years later, the first person on record who performed work at a remote location was a Boston bank president who had a phone line strung from his office to his home — in 1877!

According to Gil Gordon, founder of Gil Gordon Associates (www.gilgordon.com), a management consulting firm specializing in the implementation of telecommuting/virtual office and other alternative work arrangements, the terminology may be new, but the concept really isn’t. Gordon is recognized internationally as an expert in the virtual-office concept and is a pioneer in the field. “I’ve heard stories of people working at home in their living rooms with keypunch in the mid-1960s,” Gordon says. But, he points out, telecommuting as we know it can be traced to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when more serious attempts at telecommuting were being made by businesses, and we began to see some widespread adoption of the concept.

Even as early as the 1950s, location was becoming less and less important to the concept of work. Telephone communications were widely established. And as the make-up of work changed to a more information-based economy following World War II, staff could work more independently, without need of constant supervision.

You’ve heard of the Internet, haven’t you? Well, in 1963, a programmer working on the Arpanet Project (the forerunner to today’s Internet) withdrew from the project to stay home with his wife, who was going through a difficult pregnancy. Another programmer suggested he install an additional phone line in his home so he could program from there. The practice of working from home still didn’t have a name, but people were starting to experiment with it.

In 1973, Jack Nilles, a scientist working on a NASA satellite communications projects in Los Angeles, coined the term for tel commuting. Now, Nilles is internationally known as the father of telecommuting. He originally used the term to denote “a geographically dispersed office where workers can work at home on a computer and transmit data and documents to a central office via telephone lines.” In 1982, Nilles incorporated JALA International, Inc. (www.jala.com). An international group of management consultants, JALA’s mission is “to help organizations make effective use of information technology — telecommunications and computers — and to better cope with the accelerating rate of change in the business environment.”

By the time Nilles had come up with a word for the concept of working from locations other than the traditional office, companies were already beginning to experiment with the practice. In 1978, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of South Carolina had started a cottage-keyer project — recognizing that employees could easily perform a number of keyboarding activities at home. In the first year of the project they demonstrated a 26 percent increase in productivity. In 1980, Mountain Bell started a telecommuting project for its managers. That same year the US Army launched a telecommuting pilot.

By the mid-1980s, telecommuting was becoming an increasingly popular option. It seemed to address a number of issues, including gridlock, pollution, employee retention, savings on office space — and even increases in productivity.

In 1989, AT&T started a pilot telecommuting program in Los Angeles; the program was expanded to Phoenix in 1990. Employees tried working at home several days per month. AT&T’s move in this direction was a voluntary response to Title I of the 1990 Clean Air Act. In 1992, AT&T introduced a formal telework policy and started its Virtual Workplace training programs. By 1999, more than half of AT&T’s managers teleworked at least one day a month; 25 percent of their managers teleworked one day or more per week and 10 percent teleworked 100 percent of the time.

Telecommuting was given a boost in 1990 when amendments to the Clean Air Act mandated employer trip-reduction programs. While telecommuting wasn’t a requirement under the Act, it was a recommended way to meet trip-reduction goals and a number of organizations began experimenting with this option. The bill was changed in 1995, and reductions in car-commuter trips are no longer mandatory. However, regional or state rules are still in effect, and telecommuting remains one good way to get cars off the road.

There have been some major changes in telecommuting since its early beginnings. These changes have been driven both by demand and by technology — the Internet, email, and cell phones now make it easier than ever to work from virtually any place, at any time.

In the 1990s, it is estimated that there were approximately 3.7 million workers telecommuting in the United States. In 2000, that number had increased to 6 million. It is estimated that, by the end of 2009, 14 million people will be telecommuting. The rise in these numbers has been driven both by individual and environmental needs.

The entry of Generation Y into the workforce — a demographic that desires flexibility and independence more than those before them — has helped many businesses consider flexible work arrangements as a solution to those desires. Growing concerns for the environment has also spurned an increase in telecommuting as a solution for reducing carbon emissions. The increase in technology options that make it easy — if not seamless — for employees to stay connected regardless of physical location has also had a positive impact.

Flexible working benefits are a cost-effective way to help employees balance their work and personal lives. According to the SHRM 2008 Job Satisfaction survey report, 44 percent of employees cited the flexibility to balance work/life issues as a very important aspect of job satisfaction.