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Most employers will agree that the ability to retain employees, regardless of the economy, is always a critical need. To do this, many are looking for creative ways to meet employee needs. Flexibility is one critical area of demand. For many companies, flexibility means providing the opportunity for employees to telecommute.

In the work environment of the twenty-first century, work is being defined differently than it has ever been defined in the past. The “typical” 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday-to-Friday work week is a thing of the past. Instead, as jobs have become less structured, work has become less structured in terms of how, when, and where it gets done.

In a global, 24/7 world, the notion that all employees of an organization can work the same rigid schedule is obviously far outdated. Punching a time clock is, in fact, an artifact of the industrial revolution and no longer pertinent for what has largely become a service economy. In addition, today’s workers value flexibility more than ever, requiring employers that wish to attract and retain the best and the brightest to come up with flexible solutions to meet their needs.

A survey of human resource managers by the outsourcing services firm, Yoh, indicates that telecommuting is becoming an increasingly important aspect of organizations’ ability to recruit and retain top talent. Among the trends identified:

• 25 percent of managers allow working from home, 13 percent allow working from a satellite office, and 44 percent have other arrangements that support telecommuting. Only 19 percent say they have no telecommuting procedure.

• Most managers say they expect telecommuting to grow over the next two years. Only 35 percent said it was unlikely that telecommuting would increase.

• In addition to offering flexibility to desirable workers, telecommuting is growing due to available technologies such as wireless broadband, PDAs, and PCs capable of remote enterprise access.