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A Long Way from the Rat Race
The charms of Telluride have made it a telecommuting town

BY

KERRY HANNON IN TELLURIDE

From US News and World Report Web Site

Catherine Sellman is an environmental engineer for a consulting firm in Northern Virginia. The view from her office window? The snowcapped mountains surrounding Telluride, Colo. She works in faded jeans at her Toshiba T1900 laptop--and breaks for snowboarding when the urge strikes.

Sellman is in the vanguard of American telecommuters, who are arming themselves with airline tickets and high technology to get far away from the rat race. Besides Telluride, idylls like Bend, Ore., Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and Jackson Hole, Wyo., are drawing city escapees by the score. "I was working late and traveling constantly," remembers Sellman, who researches what kinds of contaminants clients' properties might hold. A year ago, she told her boss that she was resigning to move to the mountains. Unwilling to lose the talented 24-year-old Dartmouth graduate, he kept her on.

Now, instead of brainstorming at the water cooler, Sellman swaps ideas at the Steaming Bean coffee bar with a group of other town telecommuters: Lee Taylor, who is a software consultant for a company in Silicon Valley; Anne Brown, an analyst for Manhattan market-research firm J. S. Childs Inc., and money manager Denise DeGraff, an ex-investment banker from New York who trades for her bicoastal clients from her computer terminal on East Columbia Ave., a few blocks from the "Bean."

As recently as five years ago, plugging in from this ski town was a virtual impossibility. Until 1992, the phones were still on overburdened party lines, and connecting to the Internet required a long-distance call to Denver--seven hours away by car. Richard Lowenberg, a local land planner, saw telecommuting as a way to diversify the town's economy from the tourist trade and real estate. He persuaded the state to put up $130,000 in 1993 to bring in 21st-century telecommunications. The funds paid for a high-performance computer server to handle global Internet traffic. Telluridians can now send data around the world for the cost of a local call and tap into all kinds of resources via the World Wide Web. Today, an astounding one third of the village's 1,500 residents have Internet access. Nationally, only 4.1 percent of households do.

High-speed communications and the chance to save money make companies much more likely than in the past to let workers take the job home. "For some 60 percent of the work force, location is not critical to performing their job," says Jack Nilles, author of Making Telecommuting Happen. Some 8 million Americans link up to the office from home now, and that number is growing by around 20 percent a year, according to New York City market researcher IDC/Link Resources. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Commerce are all for the trend. They've joined several big companies to designate this week (October 23 to 27) Telecommute America Week, in hopes of drawing attention to the benefits of sending workers home.

The perks. Cost-cutting employers can save anywhere from $4,000 to $6,000 yearly per employee in reduced office space alone, says telecommuting consultant Gil Gordon. In 13 smoggy urban areas--including Baltimore, Chicago and Los Angeles--telecommuting allows businesses to meet the Clean Air Act's mandate that they trim trips to the office or face stiff fines. AT&T, for example, started a formal program in 1992 and now has a telecommuting work force numbering 35,000. Says Susan Sears, a manager for AT&T whose job is based in New Jersey though she lives in Phoenix: "I'm evaluated on what I achieve, not where I achieve it."

The clincher, perhaps, is that workers who live at the office get a lot done. Nearly half of 155 companies surveyed last year by the Conference Board, a New York business-research organization, said the greatest benefit of telecommuting is increased individual productivity. That wouldn't surprise consultant Taylor, who moved to Telluride in 1993 with his wife, a private-practice physical therapist, but has yet to break the workaholic habit. "In California, we were both averaging 80 hours a week," he recalls. In search of a breather, Taylor took a leave of absence and the couple moved. With finances tight, he jumped when his employer invited him to work long distance--and has found it tough to get his hours under control. "Now I might start at 5 a.m., but I shut down no later than 8 p.m. And if it's a perfect snow day, I go snowboarding. I solve problems better out on the mountain--it gives you a clarity," he says. Fellow Telluridian Sellman makes it a point to always be reachable, never miss a deadline and enthusiastically jump on a plane with less than 24 hours' notice.

Corporations that mandate telecommuting typically pay for equipment and provide full benefits. When Perkin-Elmer, a maker of scientific and laboratory equipment, did away with 45 sales offices, it gave affected workers $1,000 each for furniture and sprang for extra phone lines, a laptop, a cellular phone and a beeper. Firms without formal programs often expect the employee to cover expenses. Sellman already had the necessary equipment. But she pays her phone bills, covers her own health insurance and funds a retirement plan. Some firms routinely reclassify telecommuting workers as contractors and drop benefits.

any telecommuters' biggest worry is that they will drop out of the loop and be forgotten when key assignments are passed out. "It can be very isolating living here--sometimes I feel like I have no colleagues," laments marketing analyst Brown, who moved from Manhattan to an old mining cabin outside Telluride in 1989 to start her family (now 21/2 years and 2 weeks old).

Brown, who writes reports on focus groups conducted for clients such as Coach Leatherware and Calvin Klein, accepted that a move would mean a drop in her earning power: She took a pay cut from around $80,000 a year to roughly $50,000 when she went from a less flexible boss to J. S. Childs so that she could telecommute. But she doesn't accept being out of mind. Brown calls the New York office frequently to ask colleagues what's going on and exchanges long voice-mail messages with her boss. She returns to New York for meetings a couple of times a year--and skis with her boss, who owns a second home in Telluride. "It's great. We ride up the chairlift with our red pens and edit reports." Investment adviser DeGraff still keeps an apartment in New York City that she lives in for a week or two several times a year while attending to clients.

Even with the fastest modem, connecting with the business world from Telluride can pose unexpected hassles. "I always plan an extra travel day to make sure I get there in time," says DeGraff, noting that the town gets 300 inches of snow a year. "It's not quite the same thing as hopping the subway downtown. But the view from the airport is supremely better, trust me."

Making Telecommuting Happen. Jack Nilles (1994, Van Nostrand Reinhold, $24.95).

The Telecommuter's Handbook. Debra and Brad Schepp (1995, McGraw-Hill, $12.95). The top 100 company programs; the best 50 telecommuting jobs.

Telecommute America Home Page

Telecommuting Advisory Council (202-547-6157). Newsletter; seminars.