Some large enterprises already have experience of implementing telework programmes. IBM Austria experimented with an alternating field trial from 1994-1996 which involved 26 teleworkers. Hewlett-Packard has run a similar scheme since 1995 (15 teleworkers), whilst Siemens’ telework project has involved about 60 people. Other firms involved include Ericsson-Schrack, Alcatel, Kapsch and Microsoft Austria.

In this telecentre initiative, the aim its to combine better living and working within the community. With the large number of commuters to Vienna, and, in that group, a high proportion for whom a teleworking scheme is feasible, the direct target group to be served is 2.000 commuters.

By combining the provision of office space to tele-commuters with services, ranging from Internet access to childcare facilities, from training to DTP and secretarial services, the telecentre initiative brings together the best parts of earlier initiatives around the world.

The Belgian TeleWorking Association (BTA) was launched at the end of 1994. At the end of 1996 the association had about 110 members, of whom about 70 are corporate and institutional members. BTA´s membership includes many major companies, including Alcatel Bell, Belgacom, Bull, Canon, Digital, IBM, Philips and Unisys whilst universities in membership include Universite Libre de Bruxelles and Vrije Universiteit Brussel. BTA has an office in Brussels, produces a newsletter, operates a web site and organises seminars and conferences.

The National Board of Industrial Injuries

Under the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Board responsible for evaluating claims relating to industrial and workplace injuries initiated a telework scheme between 1996 and 1997 in order to assess technical, organisational and personnel issues. In a department of 24 employees, including case workers, medical specialists and support staff, about half were provided with a full home office, including ISDN connections and full office equipment and furniture in order to be able to work away from the office a couple a days a week.

The trial coincides with a project to fully digitalise the department in which the employees work, including full scanning of all incoming mail and documents and a formal workflow system. The trail was unique, at least in Denmark, as it replicated full workplace functionality in the home in order for employees to carry out the whole range of tasks just as if they were in the office. The project has now been formally evaluated as successful and likely to be extended in the future. It clearly demonstrated productivity improvements and increased employee and family satisfaction.

The government is actively interested in telework issues. The Telework Theme Group brings together representatives of the Ministries of the Interior, of Labour, of the Environment, and of Communications, together with the Association of Finnish Local Authorities, Telecom Finland an a number of universities.

Finland has about 40 telecottages, with most of them found in rural areas.

The French telework association (AFTT) was created in March 1997. This has been a long-sought event, created with high-level political involvement. There is increased academic interest in the subject.

Andersen Consulting

Andersen Consulting relocated to Avenue Georges V, Paris in 1996. Their Hotel Office has enabled them to considerably reduce the office space to approximately 3.7000 sq. metres for around 1.500 staff. Nobody has a permanent office, even the Managing Director. Reception staff all have previous fivestar hotel experience and the company is 100% client oriented.

The more has saved over $ 1 Million and the office cost has become part of the publicity budget advertising the re-engineering services of Anderson. The American partners are seriously considering using the same hotel office concept elsewhere.

IBM Deutschland signed a pioneering works council agreement on teleworking from ‘external workplaces’ in 1991 (revised 1992), which has been an influential model for companies and trade union bodies both elsewhere in Germany and more widely in Europe. This agreement protected teleworkers’ employment status and covered among other things, issues such as working hours, reimbursement of costs incurred at home and supervision procedures.

Similar collective agreements are in force at, for example, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, and the insurance company LVM. Other German companies which have telework programmes include Integrata, Dresdner Bank, GRZ, and two other insurers Allianz and Württembbergische Versicherung.

One current proposal is to create a Teleworking National Focal Point, as a source of expert advice, information and networking in Greece. It is also hoped to set up a telework newsletter, and a possible longer-term aim is the creation of a Greek Telework Association.

Ireland has a voluntary professional association for teleworkers, Telework Ireland. The organisation operates across the whole island of Ireland and has funding from Cooperation North to provide a development officer for community projects. The focus of Telework Ireland is to support microenterprises. The Irish Communications Workers Union (CWU) has a special membership category for teleworkers and is actively recruiting members in this area covering both conventional employees and the self employed.

Three major Irish companies, Aer Rianta (airports authority), Motorola and Telecom Eireann are currently carrying out telework pilot projects.

Wordwrights is a small business which prepares training materials for distance learning, specialising in training courses delivered over the Internet or through computer based training. Manager Brian Goggin operates a network of about 10 self employed teleworkers from his home in a village near Limerick. His colleagues include subject specialists, technical editors, proof-readers, and desktop publishers around Ireland.

Some of the CBT expertise is supplied cross-border by teleworkers in Britain and the US. Wordwrights clients include major Irish organisations such as the Bank of Ireland and the Irish Management Institute.

Dell Computers has a major telemarketing centre in Bray, near Dublin. The call centre employs over 400 people providing technical support and sales for the UK and Irish markets. Recently the company has launched an international web site where customers can buy computers after checking prices and options online. Each country has a section on the site in local language giving prices in local currency.

All sales orders received by phone or by Internet are transmitted electronically to Dell´s European Manufacturing Centre in Limerick, which employs over 1.300 people and has assembled over 1 million customised machines. Worldwide, Dell is selling over $2m a day over the Internet.

A number of large companies are implementing limited telework programmes for their employees. The list includes Saritel, Italtel, Telecom Italia, Dun & Bradstreet, Digital and Seat.

Digital and Telecom Italia also have a large mobile field staff equipped with portable PCs, GSM phones and modems. Telework is growing fast specially in SMEs, where innovative firms find telework particularly suited for exploring new business opportunities, like in the case of Logos, a translation firm.

Logos is a Modena-based company but is now essentially multinational. Its peculiar feature, which secured its commercial success and turned it into an excellent example of telework, is the fact that since 1979 is has made full use of the available technologies (fax at first, and now Internet) to organise its work at a distance. Today Logos is one of the world’s ten leading translation agencies, with 1.200 translators in every corner of the earth and covering a total of more than twenty languages. The translators are outside collaborators, who are paid a fee according to work actually done, while the number of full-time employees now stands at about twenty.

The Ministry of Transport, together with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and a number of IT and telecoms companies set up the Dutch Telework Platform in 1992. This was replaced by a private sector-led body, the Dutch Telework Forum (Nederlands telewerk forum, NT Forum), established in May 1996. The Forum has seventeen participant members, including leading IT companies (such as Unisys, Toshiba, and Unisys Nederland), the telecoms operator PTT Telecom, the Ministry of Transport, furniture suppliers (ASPA, IKEA) and a number of specialist firms and consultants.

Digital Equipment BV

The Dutch branch was not the first part of DIGITAL to start implementing telework schemes. The employees of the multi-national IT company were already using email and used to the networked environment in the office, when a first pilot project was implemented in a sales division in 1988. Striking results were that teleworkers enhanced their productivity by 25% due to better planning, more effective communication, reduced need to travel to the office, and the ability to reduce office space by at least 50%.

Following this pilot DIGITAL adopted telework as a normal working practice, in 1993. Today, every DIGITAL employee in the Netherlands has access to telework facilities. For the sales force, the "hot-desking" concept in the office led to a ratio of 1 desk for 4 people, and further reduction is foreseen.

Only in the last two years has the real discussion about teleworking started to be an issue and, today, is a hot topic involving a broad spectrum of society. Call centres supporting clients of banks and insurance companies operate on a 24 hour-basis using teleworkers.

Razão Final

This is a strategic management consultancy company founded in 1994 and working mainly in Portugal, Spain, Brazil and USA. Teleworking made it possible to compete with the main players in the field. Team work on-line with a relatively small staff and little overhead made it possible to support customers from three continents, and avoid time wasting travel.

The company has used teleworking since its inception and today involves people working remotely from almost all continents. Starting with the small budget it had available, it would not have been possible in any other way. Today, the company considers itself "a small big company" because it has access to markets in the same way a big company has, but without the overhead, whilst retaining the flexibility of a small enterprise.

Three organisations are helping to promote the idea of teleworking:

1. The Asociación Española de Teletrabajo (Spanish Telework Association) has more than 200 members and sponsors. The association has organised a number of conferences (both physical and electronic). Members have access to Internet resources and also received a telework handbook.
2. The Asociación Española de Usuarios de Internet (Spanish Internet Users Association)
3. The Asociación Española de Documentación y Teletrabajo (Spanish Association for Documentation and Telework) are also active.

IBM Spain

IBM Spain has been running one of the most ambitious telework schemes in Spain. Starting as a pilot project at the end 1995 with about 100 salesperson or technicians, the scheme now affects about 1.500 people. The company made use of the most advanced technology and the full integration of groupwork concepts. Each member of the scheme uses a laptop, connected to the central webpages, and BBS via modem and telephone. Centralised information, accessible from each individual laptop, includes company and social news, password controlled access to numerous databases, a centralised agenda with access to the travelling schedules and engagements of higher management, the publications of own agenda and scheduled engagements, "chat" about sales made, etc. The system reproduces most of the environment of a physical office space and maintains people in permanent contact.

The software and groupware tools used are maintained and updated on-line. Periodically, each member "docks" his or her laptop to a central facility which automatically ensures that all the members of the team are using the same software versions and norms.

A number of large companies have formally adopted teleworking programmes. These include Siemens-Nixdorf, Bull, Telia, Skandia, Digital and Ericsson.

Siemens Nixdorf

Siemens Nixdorf has developed a major teleworking programme in 1994-1995 at a time when it was relocating its office to a new, less central, site about 30 km north of Stockholm. More than four-fifths of the staff now telework. The company , which developed the telework programme in conjunction with the union SIF, expects workers to come to the office at least one day a week.

The TCA (Telework, Telecottage & Telecentre Association) is the most developed telework association in Europe, currently with about 2.500 members. It is a not-for-profit body with directors elected by the membership, produces a bi-monthly magazine Teleworker and also recently published a comprehensive Teleworking Handbook.

Britain´s network of telecottages and telecentres developed in the early 1990s, mainly in smaller towns and rural areas. There are currently about 150.

BT has run national marketing campaigns on the theme of teleworking on a number of occasions, most recently in early Summer 1997. BT for a time had a teleworking research team. It has also rum two small-scale home-teleworking pilots. Other telecoms and IT companies, including Mercury (Cable & Wireless), Digital and IBM have been active in promoting the idea of teleworking.

KITE

Kinawley Integrated Teleworking Enterprise is a highly successful enterprise which sources 60% of its work from North America, and offers childcare facilities as well as training to its employees. The initiative was made possible by multiple European interventions, mainly Structural Funds.

The Western Isles, up to the north coast of Scotland, is one of the remote areas with a declining population. A series of projects were launched with the support of the Council in order to make the Isles more attractive for youngsters to stay or come back to. The IT project started in 1994 by assessing the current IT skills of those resident in the Western Isles, and resulted in a Skill Register Database, which is continuously expanded and maintained with currently more than 500 individual profiles.