Moving Employee Mobility Programs Forward

The 2009 Total Employee Mobility Benchmarking Report, released by Runzheimer International in early October, shows that though businesses are investing in remote workforce programs, they do not have control over the associated risks, costs, or benefits.

Some of the major report findings included that 51 percent of the workforce is mobile on any given day, whether that means traveling, working from a virtual office, or driving for business. This number has gone up by 31 percent since 2006.

The total investment in workforce mobility has also gone up considerably in the past four years, and the number per-employee, per-year is $7,426, a figure that has gone up three percent year by year.

Despite this steady growth in investment, 73 percent of respondents have no policies in place when it comes to virtual office programs while another 56 percent are unaware if the programs they have instituted are productive. Sixty-four percent of companies reported that corporate travel costs are loosely managed.

One possible reason behind this lack of metrics could be that mobile workforce programs often involve multiple departments. For example, 80 percent of employees full into multiple categories of drivers, travelers, and virtual offices, and often have to interact with more than one department in order to fulfill their job responsibilities.

Since the mobile workforce is a growing body, and not an issue that will disappear anytime soon from organizational agendas, what are steps companies can take to better harness employee mobility programs?