Looking at the growing Virtual Assistance Industry – what’s happening in the US and what’s happening in my area?

Obama signed the Telework Enhancement Bill in December last year allowing federal employees to work from home 2-3 days per week – I’ve been looking to see what impact this is having on US federal workers and how this new way of working is about to be rolled out.

My family lives in Doncaster, South Yorkshire and suffer the horrendous traffic congestion on route causing absolute chaos and continuous stressful journeys for those travelling into the centre due to bus lanes being incorporated into the already congested 2 lane road into the bottle neck area of the town. I wonder how many of those driving into work, dropping kids off at school and child care facilities would relish the chance of working from home even if only 2 to 3 days per week.

There is more evidence of businesses and organisations seeing the benefit of virtual working and the huge impact this can have on driving to and from office premises. Apart from the environmental factors with councils desperate to get more cars off the roads especially those leading into city centres, there’s the cost of petrol and parking charges for workers.

When will more organisations and businesses see the huge impact and benefits of allowing employees to work from home along with using virtual assistants to take care of their day to day admin tasks – it makes such absolute sense!

The BBC has caught onto the fact and did a report on ‘Doing business in your pyjamas’.

Taken from the Loudon Times in the US, Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.), one of the authors of the bill and a longtime advocate for telecommuting opportunities for federal workers, applauded the bill. In advocating for the bill’s passage, Auten’s group pointed to research showing that a three-day-per-week teleworker can save almost $5,900 each year on commuting costs and prevent more than 9,000 pounds of pollutants from damaging the environment.

I loved Congressman Frank Wolf’s description found on a previous article he said there was no magic in strapping yourself into a vehicle and joining a queue of traffic every day when you can easily do the same job from your home office.

So what are we waiting for, if it makes so much sense to work from your home office why aren’t more people and businesses doing this?

I would love to do a survey and ask every driver that parks their car in the centre of cities and large towns like Doncaster on a Monday morning, just to see what their reaction was if they had the chance to work from home.

Watch this space!