HOLD THE PHONE Fifty percent of the US workforce holds a job that is compatible with at least partial telecommuting. And as these professionals show the number of professions in which one can telecommute is growing

E lizabeth Rosenzweig works out of her home in Toronto. But her clients hail from all over the world — the Caribbean Italy England Spain Kenya Zambia Malaysia the Philippines and Costa Rica. “I’ve worked with families and professionals in every inhabited continent on Earth ” says Elizabeth who is a speech language pathologist a listening and spoken language specialist and a certified auditory verbal therapist.

She rattles off some statistics: Three in 1000 babies are born with hearing loss and 90 percent of parents of children with hearing loss choose for their children to learn to communicate via listening and speaking (versus needing visual cues like lip reading or sign language). The problem is that there aren’t enough certified auditory verbal therapists to meet families’ needs. “Working via teletherapy allows me to provide services to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to them” says Elizabeth who’s fluent in both English and Spanish.

Elizabeth never planned on being one of the 63 million people projected to telecommute this year alone. “I actually wanted to go into private practice” she says. “But teletherapy made sense because my husband and I were relocating for his job.”

Dr. Michael Tobin a clinical psychologist based in Jerusalem also fell into telecommuting. “About seven years ago one of my clients was returning to the States but he still wanted to continue therapy with me. That’s basically how my Skype practice started ” says Dr. Tobin who has been practicing psychotherapy since 1975. Through referrals word of mouth and his website Dr. Tobin now treats individuals from as far away as Australia and South America.

Zooming into a New Era

Professions like accounting writing and graphic design naturally lend themselves to telecommuting — there’s little face time required so employees can easily work outside of the office. That isn’t the case with jobs like counseling or teaching where face-to-face communication is critical. How then are therapists counselors and teachers pulling it off?

For many the answer is by “Zooming” — using Zoom videoconferencing technology. An English professor in Israel’s Open University Aliza Nohi uses Zoom to teach reading comprehension to her students who live throughout Israel.

“I present the course material on a screen and then initiate discussion about it through the Zoom microphone” explains Aliza who lives in Hod Hasharon. “The students always see and hear me because I have my camera and microphone on. In fact they often tell me they have a more personal feeling this way as if they’re having a private lesson.”

There are a few ways to participate in an online class through Zooming Aliza explains either via the computer microphone or using the “chat” feature to send in questions or comments which then appear on everyone’s screen. Although Aliza cannot see her students if they don’t turn on their cameras the Zoom software does indicate the name (or username) of the person she’s communicating with.

From her home in Israel Chana Shain also “zooms” with her colleagues in Lakewood New Jersey. A quality assurance director for Oorah her job is to make sure that every call made by the sales operations and marketing teams for the Kars 4 Kids organization is handled professionally. “Originally Oorah was planning on flying me in to meet the team and then do follow-up on the phone ” she says. “But once we realized how frequent the meetings needed to be I started researching other options and that’s when I discovered Zoom.”