More Than 134,000 Feds to Telework Next Week

More than 134,000 federal employees have signed up to participate in telework week starting March 3, according to public-private partnership group Mobile Work Exchange.

Total savings from the event will top $11.3 million, according to Mobile Work Exchange’s General Manager Cindy Auten. Monday will mark the fourth annual telework week, which agencies use as a continuity of operations exercise.

In addition to generally promoting telework, the event allows agencies to test their business continuity plans and stress test their systems in areas like help desk support and remote logins.

To find out if your agency is participating in telework week, click here. To take the pledge, click here.

During the program’s first year, just 39,000 feds pledged to participate. The 2013 telework week had a record 136,000 participants, 82 percent of whom were federal workers. The event this year will top those figures.

Employees who have participated before are returning, Auten said, and are spreading the word to their colleagues. Mobile Work Exchange provides information and materials to agencies that encourage employees to participate.

Federal agencies have worked since the passage of the 2010 Telework Enhancement Act to expand telework availability to their employees.

About 30 percent of eligible employees teleworked at some point during fiscal 2012, according to Office of Personnel Management data, up from 21 percent the previous year. The number of all federal employees deemed eligible for telework by their agency increased by 49 percent between 2011 and 2012.

(Image via Adam Radosavljevic/Shutterstock.com)