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The price of letting your employees not work from the office? Decreased absenteeism, cost savings, efficient and happy workers. Two experts weigh in on the pros and cons

Stephen Nickerson has six employees based out of Saint John, but most days his Canterbury Street office is virtually empty.

When RapidMind Solutions Inc. employees aren't at a client's office or site, Nickerson lets them get their work done from wherever they like.

"It really doesn't matter where you're at," he says.

His office has room for 10 people, but only two of the six workers are there regularly, the rest telecommute.

"I've got really good quality people here in Saint John," he says. "But I can't find enough of them fast enough. I'll eventually get them, but in the mean time I don't want to throw away work."

Since his employees can work from anywhere there is an Internet connection, RapidMind also has workers in Toronto, Halifax, Truro, N.S., and the Washington, D.C. area - one each.

The software development company's employees spend up to half their time working where clients need them to be.

"It doesn't really matter where you start," he said, "but are you willing to travel?"

Having his employees spread over North America allows RapidMind to have someone close to clients or at least to a heavy traffic international airport.

But the staff's internal communications are mostly through email, online text meeting, and voice and video conferencing programs such as Skype.

University of New Brunswick human resources professor Jeff Frooman sees this lack of face to face time as a potential source of miscommunications and frustrations.

"It becomes complicated for them to know exactly what the boss wants if they're not actually in the office with the boss," he says, speaking generally about telecommuting.

As executive director of the society for business ethics, Frooman knows long-distance communications can leave the wrong impression as emails can sometimes seem curt.

"It's critical that we meet at least once a year face-to-face for us to get to know each other and realize we're not jerks," he says.

Nickerson can easily hold formal staff meetings with his oversized office.

"We can always fly in the other people to have the face-to-face," he says, although he rarely does.

Nickerson says his office space is overkill, but with an affordable rent he isn't concerned because it gives him room to grow, which he plans on doing.

Nickerson incorporated his business two years ago and only hired his first employee a year after that.

Despite plans to expand operations, including increasing the Saint John staff size, Nickerson says he will likely keep his office until he has more than 10 people who want to work from there.

"I could probably keep the size of the office up to 20 people," he says as he suspects at least half will want to work from home.

Frooman is concerned some people won't be able to work as efficiently from home with extra distractions. He says companies looking to have employees start telecommuting should make sure the person is suited for it.

"You could have a very good employee who's been a very good employee for years and suddenly you've made a very dramatic shift in how they do their work," he says.

But Bob Fortier, president of the Canadian Telework Association, says the practice will increase efficiency about 10 per cent. He gathered this from talking to managers who incorporated some telecommuting into their traditional office set up.

Fortier also gathered that many workers will spend some of what used to be commuting time working, and that teleworking decreases absenteeism.

"They might feel too unwell to take a shower," he says. "However they might feel well enough to do some of the work from home for some of the hours, perhaps all of the hours."

About 1.5 million Canadians telework at least one day a week saving their employers about $5,000 each, Fortier says.

"I haven't found a case yet where we've not been able to easily convince top executives our numbers are quite conservative and very achievable," Fortier says.

Nickerson doesn't notice a huge savings from allowing teleworking. He does it to make his employees more efficient and happier.

But if his company were to grow into the dozens or hundreds of employees, Nickerson says he could see where a significant cost savings could occur.

Both Frooman and Fortier agree telecommuting isn't for everyone. While Frooman also recognizes the potential benefits he says businesses should weigh the pros and cons of telecommuting for their companies.

If they do decide to make the change, Frooman says they should do it slowly while documenting the effects on productivity and morale.