A Flourishing Work-from-Home Community

According to the Canadian Telework Association, telecommuting can help companies save office-space and parking requirements up to US$2,000 per employee in North America, increase productivity and job performance by 20% on average, as well as reducing absenteeism and healthcare related costs by one or two days per year on average.

Some players in both the private and public sectors have taken the lead in promoting telecommuting. For instance, the General Services Administration in the US has set a goal of setting 50 per cent of its eligible workforce to work from home at least one day a week. Sun has been running an Open Work program for a decade and it is said that some 56% of its employees are in the telecommuting ranks.

The China market has good fundamentals for fostering telecommuting because of the growing popularity of Internet and broadband. China’s mobile Internet population surged a whopping 113 per cent in 2008 and could see explosive growth in the coming years, according to a recent report issued by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). China has the largest "netizen" population worldwide with some 298 million Internet users. The rate of Internet use in China has reached 22.6 per cent, surpassing the global average of 21.9 per cent for the first time.

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