NEC TO LET 90% OF WHITE-COLLAR STAFF TELECOMMUTE

TOKYO, Jul 01, 2008 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX) -- NIPNY | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- NEC Corp. (TSE:6701) will give nearly all its white-collar employees the option of working from home starting Tuesday, becoming the latest Japanese electronics company to allow telecommuting.

Some 20,000 employees -- 90 per cent of NEC's work force, excluding new hires and factory staff -- will be able to telecommute one day a week with their supervisors' approval. The at-home workers will link up to company computers and servers over the Internet and will have to check in with their bosses via webcam at the start and end of the workday.

To lower the risk of information leaks, the telecommuters will get computers stripped of data storage capabilities. State-of-the art encryption technology will keep data as safe as if it were being transmitted over a proprietary line.

NEC has been experimenting with telecommuting since July 2006. More than 70 per cent of workers participating in the trials responded that working at home improved their productivity, prompting the firm to implement a full-fledged program.

The trend toward telecommuting has been sweeping the electronics industry. IBM Japan Ltd. introduced the option in 2001. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (TSE:6752) did the same for 30,000 employees in April 2007 and now has around 3,000 working from home.

(Nikkei)

More News:   Market Updates | Stock Alerts | All Trading News | Stock Index