As a Viet Nam era veteran myself, I often watch veterans issues. Friend and colleague Rich Tehrani over and TMCnet posted this story earlier today -

VoIP Changes the Lives of Disabled Veterans
By Rich Tehrani President and Editor-in-Chief

Many people know how VoIP has changed lives and how it has allowed communications to take place among people who previously could not afford to communicate. Voice overIP is obviously disruptive, but at the same time, it has changed the world in many ways. We know about cost savings and how service provider business models have evolved over the years but we have not seen enough media attention on how VoIP is changing lives by enabling people who could not previously be employed to finally get jobs.

There are hundreds of thousands of disabled veterans in the world and these distinguished American citizens are often unable to contribute to the workforce because they aren’t able to commute to a job.

In May of last year, I wrote about how call centers are changing lives and specifically about the excellent work Ken Smith is doing as Program Manager at the Military Order of the Purple Heart (MOPH). [full article]

In our past Reatlime VoIP Community Library, I wrote a paper on using VoIP to extend the corporate perimeter with telecommuting.

Extending the Perimeter with VoIP
By Ken Camp
Broadband services are more and more widely available to both remote branch offices and the home. A few years ago, DSL and cable modem connections were available only in a very few communities. Today, some form of broadband connection is available almost everywhere, delivering a widening selection of services.

In IP Telephony Demystified (McGraw-Hill), I described an Internet call center scenario that has yet to penetrate the business market in any large degree. Today, more than the distributed call center, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provides a suite of tools for distributing the business workforce and extending the perimeter.

Small offices housing a handful of employees can easily be connected to the corporate headquarters, providing not only data network transparency but also telephone services. With VoIP phones, a worker can be anywhere—in a remote office, at home, even in a hotel across the country—and work just as if they’re sitting in their office. For discussion purposes, this article will focus on how telecommuters can use VoIP to everyone’s benefit; however, VoIP can provide enhanced connectivity for remote offices of any size, integrating them seamlessly into the corporate telecommunications system.

VoIP and Telecommuters
Telecommuters make up a fast-growing and surprisingly diverse segment of the workforce. One common trait they share is that they spend more time and energy working, and less traveling to and from work. The telecommuting phenomenon took hold during the 1990s. According to the International Telework Association and Council (ITAC) some 50 million workers will telecommute either full- or part-time by this year.

Telecommuting’s popularity and growth is driven by the fact that it simply makes sense in many cases. It can be good for both the employer and the employee. The advantages of telecommuting to workers are fairly obvious. Workers often gain flexibility in scheduling, and they waste less time commuting to and from work. Benefits to employers are sometimes less obvious, but even more compelling. Overhead costs of maintaining expensive office space can be reduced significantly. Productivity gains are a common result noted by companies deploying telecommuting programs. In the competitive hunt for talent, a telecommuting program can provide access to a broader pool of talented workers. And telecommuting is good for the environment, relieving traffic congestion. In crowded metropolitan areas, telecommuting is viewed as an alternative commuting method, like carpooling or bicycling.

Advances in VoIP technologies and the availability of digital PBX-IP gateways are driving the growth of telecommuting for many companies. Telecommuters can connect to a company’s network for email and data, connect to the VoIP-based private branch exchange (PBX) for the business phone network, and enjoy the same access to voice and data resources as office workers. Perhaps more important, the distinction between communicating workers on-site or telecommuters can be transparent to customers and other callers. Work has become more of an activity and less of a location.

Workers today are network connected in many ways. People have phone lines, mobile phones, and broadband Internet. As we’ve become more network-oriented, many people’s work habits have changed. More people focus on family and friends and want to change how they participate in their work environment. Work and personal lives blur together as we find ourselves moving toward an always on, always connected way of life.

Teleworking provides an approach that offers a work-at-home job, but with far more connectivity that we’ve previously seen. VoIP enables extension of the perimeter to virtually anywhere there is network availability. [full PDF]

I just uploaded the PDF into the Digital Library here. I'm not quite sure how to get it on the web page listing, but you can get to the complete PDF here, and I'll work with our web team to get it posted on the Digital Library pages with other articles.

It's important for us all to remember that while we might work in an office, there's a huge workforce community that's been somewhat disenfranchised in the past. Disabled people, stay-at-home mom's, rural residents in sparsely populater areas, and many others. With the rapidly changing landscape of unified communications and VoIP technologies, many of these people now have the means to fully participate in the work force as remote workers. They're a frequently untapped resource.

Let's all use the technologies not just to enhance our own work, but be mindful of the fact that these technologies also bring access to a pool of talent and resources often overlooked in the past.



Technorati Tags: VoIP, unified communications, remote workers, telework, telecommuting