High on the list of evolving management trends are telecommuting and the mobile workplace. What started as a pipe dream for working mothers who didn’t want to sacrifice their careers for the “mommy track” has evolved into a lifestyle choice and a more flexible workplace for professionals of all stripes at varying stages of their careers.

In the workplace of the future, some new hires may never know what full-time, on-site employment looks like.

Send in the Cloud

As the captioned TalentCulture blog points out (see link below),

Cloud-based business systems (especially phone technology) are revolutionizing the way team members interact, employees are supervised and training is performed, according to a recent post from TalentCulture. Plain-vanilla conference calling has yielded to sophisticated video conferencing that can even incorporate white-board brainstorming sessions.

Business phone platforms are rapidly becoming more automated, personalized and cost-efficient – enabling businesses of all sizes (especially smaller ones) to achieve greater levels of growth than they did just a few years ago. Customer calls are more easily tracked, and automatic callback features ensure that customers are satisfied with the service they’ve received.

The Winter of Our Discontent

The winter of 2015 will either go down as the year many parts of the country would like to forget, and/or the “new normal” in the wake of superstorm Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the “polar vortex” of last winter and inevitable changes in climate from sea to shining sea and around the globe.

It also may be remembered as the winter that took telecommuting to a whole new level and made flexibility in the workplace literally a household word – and more of a necessity than a luxury for the snow-bound in Boston and other parts of New England.

This U.S. News & World Report article cites statistics (first reported in the Boston Globe) of the damage borne by the states of Massachusetts ($265 million, most of it in lost wages) and New York ($700 million) caused by just a one-day storm, let alone days and weeks of record-breaking snowfalls and arctic temperatures.

And it’s hardly only the East Coast that’s gotten hammered this year. The Midwest and large swaths of the South are also experiencing unusually harsh winters. Still, while some corporations and CEOs are singing the praises of telecommuting, others no longer allow it (e.g., Yahoo CEO Marisa Mayer, who may well come to regret that decision she made when first appointed to the helm of the struggling technology giant), and it’s hardly the norm at most companies.

Also cited in the article are some interesting findings of the 2014 National Study of Employers: while some 67% of surveyed employers allow a vague “some of their employees” to work from home “part of the time,” the percentages of employers that support and/or actually allow regular telecommuting are in single digits. It’s surprising, considering the staggering estimates of lost-productivity costs due to severe weather in recent years in multi-millions – and even billions – of dollars.

We’ve Seen the Future, and It Is Here

All that said, technological advances are making telecommuting inevitable, like so many other facets of office life that needed to be done on-site not so very long ago, despite resistance to it by some old-school employers.

Forbes recently published a list of “The Top 100 Companies Offering Telecommuting Jobs in 2015," and it goes way beyond innovative Silicon Valley and high-tech firms comprised of Millennials and Gen Xers. In addition to the expected computer and I.T. powerhouses, the list encompasses household-name corporations, as well up-and-comers, in medical and healthcare; customer service; sales; administrative; education and training; financial services; and marketing.

FlexJobs, one of a growing number of job boards dedicated to telecommuters, free-lancers, part-time workers, and professionals wanting greater flexibility, has seen its job listings grow by 26% in the past year.

So it appears likely that climate extremes (colder winters and hotter summers) are no longer the exception to the rule. Even if telecommuting wasn’t being advanced organically, it would continue to be expedited by weather that makes commuting next-to-impossible. If nothing else, the winter of 2015 will serve as a reminder that the smart money may be working from home next winter.