A few years back, while working on the project to design a new corporate headquarters for my wireless telecommunications organization, we came down to the actual dollar cost of a cubicle, from hardware to office furniture, to utilities. Not counting the computer and phone, the cost ran at the time (this was 2005) to be about $9700 per cube, all-in. We immediately realized that there was significant cost savings to be considered for reconfiguring some level of our staff to work remotely. But, and there are many buts, would the culture support it? Could we track productivity? What came next?

I'm writing this article from my kitchen table. More often than not, my office is a coffee shop. Why not? Most of my work takes place over the web. I have a laptop with a cellular modem, a cell phone, and my brains. That's about all I need most days. (Heck, some days, I don't even need the brain).

Molly Ford writes at the Cisco blog about balancing productivity and functionality in the world of a remote worker. In it is a pitch for Cisco's new Virtual Office Solution.

Dell has launched an entire new site, Digital Nomads (http://www.digitalnomads.com ) to address the new world of workers who take meetings at Starbucks more often than they do the stuffy conference room.

Of course, there are still questions and concerns.

The questions that managers have about remote work are always the same:

• How do I know if the worker is being productive?
• How do I measure a remote employee?
• What will I lose when the worker isn't local?
• Are there more costs involved?

The answer to the first two questions are much more reflective of the manager. How do you measure your employee's productivity now? By watching whether she is at her desk or not? Measurements are built around deliverables, around availability, and around improvements in productivity and quality. There are numbers to measure all these things, should an issue arise.

The third question, about what one loses when a worker is remote, is dependent on the business. Can your organization use remote tools like conference calling and the occasional video conference to maintain contact? Do email and alternate communications tools like IM give you enough coverage? Usually, what gets cut out when someone isn't located at the physical office falls into two categories: business networking, or serendipitous opportunity.

These are both useful occasions, and shouldn't be discounted lightly, but most managers and supervisors will know their work environment, and whether the benefits of working remotely outweigh any potential loss of opportunity from not having those two experiences happen as often.

Finally, on the matter of cost, the answer is easy: no. It costs less to host someone remotely in several ways. The computer equipment costs are less. The networking and infrastructure costs are less. The added expense of telecommunications like a robust cellular plan and a cellular modem for a laptop can be absorbed easily into the rest of the communications/ IT budget.

So the question falls back to the manager and the leaders of the organization: are you ready to consider remote workers? How would you equip them? What changes would your infrastructure, your software, and your workflows need to accommodate this?