Teleworking in Danville paying off for employees, state

AXTON — To get to her job with the Virginia Department of Taxation, all Heather Cole has to do is walk from her bedroom to her living room.

That’s because Cole is one of more than 600 Department of Taxation, or TAX, employees across the state who work from home at least one day a week.

“I do find working from home is much more productive,” said Cole, a team leader in the department’s customer service department for the Danville-Martinsville area. “There’s no distraction.”

TAX has based part of its permanent and temporary work force at homes since 2001. Of its 1,100 TAX employees across Virginia, 59 percent — or 644 employees — work from home at least one day a week, said Joel Davison, TAX public relations manager. About 350 are totally home-based, while the remaining 294 work from home at least one day a week, Davison said.

However, workers who handle classified federal information such as IRS data can’t work from home, Davison said.

Teleworking saves the department about $130,000 per year in rent, parking and utilities, Davison said. Teleworking also reduces gas emissions and helps the workers as well. Morale is better and the turnover rate in the customer service department fell from 57 percent in 2007 to 21 percent last year. Through July this year, the rate has plunged to 4.8 percent, Davison said.

Also, customer-service functions have increased 12 percent, Davison said.

“Employees are happier, morale is better, productivity is up,” Davison said.

“The benefits have been substantial,” Janie E. Bowen, the state’s tax commissioner, said in a statement. “Employees view it as a perk and it’s been a great business decision for us.”

For Cole, performing her job at home saves money on gas, slows wear and tear on her vehicle and makes her job more productive by eliminating distractions. She also doesn’t have to worry about what she wears to work, thereby cutting costs on dry-cleaning. Her work includes overseeing TAX customer-service workers and making sure taxpayers receive quality customer service.

Monday was statewide Telework Day, the day Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and telework organizations were encouraging state agencies and private businesses to test the benefits of the practice, Davison said.

It was in 2001 when the state closed eight district TAX offices due to budget cuts. As a result, more than 200 field auditors and collectors became home-based. In 2006, Kaine issued an executive order establishing the Office of Telework Promotion and Broadband Assistance. TAX became the pilot agency toward Kaine’s goal of having at least 20 percent eligible employees from all state agencies teleworking by 2010.

At the beginning of 2007, TAX started home-basing eligible employees in waves of 50 at least one day a week and began recruiting 23 full-time, home-based customer-service representatives in the Danville-Martinsville region, Davison said.

“That has been a great boon to us,” Davison said. “We did that because the area needs jobs down there.”

The workers in the Danville-Martinsville region began work in October 2007 and the following February, the state hired an additional 30 seasonal data-entry employees for the busy tax-filing period. Cole went through training in Martinsville in October 2007 and began work the following December, she said.

• Contact Crane at jcrane@registerbee.com or (434) 791-7987