Remote control: Meet "the father of telework"

"It was a phenomenon that Nilles, a U.S. Air Force veteran turned NASA consultant, dubbed the "telecommunications-transportation tradeoff." Viewing remote work as a potential substitute for commuting, Nilles sought to gauge telework's effectiveness by partnering with a major national insurance company (whose name he still can't divulge for legal reasons). A group of employees worked from local centers equipped with "minicomputers" that transferred data to the company's mainframe. In the 1974 pilot study, Nilles concluded that this approach resulted in higher productivity and reduced turnover."

"But remote work didn't fully catch on for decades. Now, 26% of full-time, remote-capable U.S. employees telecommute, while 52% operate in a hybrid environment, according to the latest Gallup data. Yet views may be shifting again as the federal government and major corporations like Starbucks, Dell and Microsoft abandon work-from-home all together. More than five decades after the first documented study on telecommuting, Big Think spoke with Nilles, the "father of telework," about its past, present and future."

Jack Nilles proposed telework in the early 1970s to reduce traffic congestion and framed it as the "telecommunications-transportation tradeoff." A 1974 pilot with an insurance company used local centers and minicomputers linked to a mainframe, producing higher productivity and reduced turnover. Current Gallup data shows 26% of remote-capable U.S. employees telecommute and 52% work hybrid. Some governments and major corporations are reversing remote-work policies. Early findings indicated wide telework adoption could significantly affect transportation costs and design, and the practice continues to evolve more than five decades later.

Read at Big Think