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ITAC PRESIDENT TESTIFIES ON TELEWORK IN SMALL BUSINESS

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24, 2002 - Today Tim Kane, president of ITAC, the association for advancing work from anywhere, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Small Business Committee, chaired by Rep. Donald A. Manzullo (R-IL). Kane is a pioneer in telework and also the CEO of Kinetic Workplace, a provider of virtual workplace solutions. He spoke about the challenges and benefits of telework for small businesses, to help Congress identify policies and programs beneficial to small business adoption of telework.

"The highest concentrations of teleworkers exist in companies with one to 25 employees," said Kane to the Committee. "My experience in helping companies implement programs tells me that small businesses are able to achieve higher participation rates because of their fairly flat organizational structures, which allow them to overcome the cultural challenges that are often associated with teleworking, such as management resistance, anxiety about promotions or loss of control.

"Telework has had a direct effect on the performance of my company," Kane continued. "Enabling our people to work from anywhere, anytime, has allowed us to be a more agile company and to effectively compete with much larger organizations. It has also allowed us to provide a better work/life balance for our people and to access talented employees who were not willing to relocate.

"With our people no longer tethered to the office, we are able to occupy about two-thirds of the space that an organization of our size would typically lease (based on industry standards). I can’t stress how important this savings was to us in the third and fourth quarter of last year when the economy slowed dramatically. It literally saved us from having to lay off employees."

In spite of the high concentration of teleworkers in small businesses, Kane informed Committee Members that little research has been conducted to quantify the benefits of telework to small businesses. He concluded that small businesses would benefit from the same level of research that large companies and government agencies have had available to them for several years.

The entire testimony can be downloaded from ITAC’s web site, www.workingfromanywhere.org.

About ITAC
On January 1, 2005, ITAC became the Telework Advisory Group for WorldatWork. Prior to this year, ITAC was the International Telework Association and Council (ITAC). As part of WorldatWork, ITAC continues its mission of advancing the growth and success of work independent of location through groundbreaking research such as this year’s Guide, an annual conference held every September and monthly e-mail communications on the latest developments in telework. Information on ITAC and its activities is available on the Web at www.workingfromanywhere.org or by telephone at 301-650-2322.