The Advantages and Drawbacks of Teleworking - Essay Example

Pervasive Computing Case Study QUESTION According to the article from Anne Fisher "How telecommuters can stay connected" in 2003 4.4 million Americans were working from home and by the end of 2004 they were 8.1 million1. The increase in the number of teleworkers in the United States can be explained by many factors. First many firms or federal agencies have increased their efforts to encourage telework. "The Status of Telework in the Federal Government"2 states that the Department of Defense has implemented a telework policy to offer the opportunity to existing workers to work from home. However, we have to consider this increase to come from a real demand from the workers. Teleworking offers a greater flexibility in work and allows the home worker to schedule his own day of work by a series of goal. Therefore, the teleworker is able to work before or after normal working hours and also on weekends. Furthermore, it also allows telecommuters to combine their work from home with other forms of teleworking. It is the result of a better access to high speed internet connections, an improved ability to concentrate and a better balance between work and family according to The International Telework Association & Council (ITAC)3. QUESTION 2. As seen on the extract of Anne Fisher's article, there is a real debate on the advantages and drawbacks of teleworking. We will try to define these two sides of that type of work from two points of views: the teleworker himself and the managers of a teleworking team. In the first question of our essay we have seen some of the benefits of telecommuting. Teleworkers can define their own schedule which can include working before or after regular office hours, they achieve to balance their personal life with their work better than they used to and they show an increased concentration and therefore a higher productivity. The Midwest Institute for Telecommuting Education announces that home workers present an increase of 3 to 25% in productivity4. Nevertheless Paul Dickerson's story is a perfect example of the drawbacks of teleworking. As he was working from home, people started to believe that he was unemployed and avoided him. Even if the share of teleworkers in the total volume of workers is increasing, it has not completely reached a social recognition and people that are working from home could be considered as unemployed or lazy. However it appears, in Dickerson's case that he has now a different problem. As his friends are now aware of how he organizes a day of work, they believe that he has a lot of free time. Working from home requires an important organization. On one hand it is much more flexible and you can combine several activities at the same time, but on the other hand you have to show a strong discipline in order to accomplish your tasks and reach your objectives. The managers and the businesses can also face some difficulties when dealing with teleworking. Joseph Cothrel first describes us the lack of non-verbal communication in teleworking. He explains that when you receive an email from a teleworkers you don't have any tone of voice or meaningful pauses which according to him can convey crucial information. One of the main issues of teleworking is presented here. The communication can be difficult because you are not directly in contact with the worker. All the elements of body language are missing and ultimately this can delay the work. Instead of a direct explanation, you will need several emails to correctly define the work which has to be done and the managers will not have any awareness of the worker's feelings regarding their request. Christina Parr raises another danger. The in-office workers can wrongly consider the teleworkers, they may believe they are not working at all. We are again faced with the social notion of work which is attending work in an office from 9a.m. to 5p.m. However Parr and J. Scott Calhoun present their teleworkers as accountable and reachable and the speech that Calhoun gives to his in-office workers is more than reassuring regarding managers' opinions of telecommuters: "So-and-So may be writing code at 11 on Saturday Night, so it's really okay that he's never in the office." QUESTION 3. In the previous question we have seen the numerous advantages and drawbacks connected to teleworking from the point of view of the worker and the manager. In the following paragraphs we will discuss the questions of how a worker can stay connected to all that happens in the office and how to manage a virtual team i.e. a group of people under you responsibility that you never see. Even if a teleworker has an absolute freedom on organizing his day of work, it is not disconnected from what is happening in the office. Home workers are faced with an important obstacle: how to stay connected with the office Bob Smith, director of ITAC, in "Numbers of teleworkers skyrocketing"5 presents us the different means that are available to the telecommuter. Smith states that the variety of technologies offered to the teleworker allows him to be continuously aware of what happens in the office. The emails or the use of broadband are some examples of the tools available to the teleworker. He claims that, even though there is a minority of people using broadband, in terms of how people connect when they do have broadband at home people look at work no differently than working in the office. "They have all the capabilities, in terms of speed and access for email, research, communication and collaboration with people in remote locations"6 Another tool that is used by teleworkers to be in constant communication with the office is Instant Messaging (IM). Smith comments that these types of communications have gone from nothing to a very high percentage of people using IM for their business communications. Regarding managers, the problem is however different. When you are part of a system like the teleworker you have to stay in touch with one place: the office. But when you have to manage a virtual team you have to be in contact with numerous locations at the same time and therefore there may consequences in not having all of your employees at the same location. As Christina Parr explained it in the article, there must be a careful selection of the teleworkers. One quality that needs to be found is accountability. The chosen teleworkers are expected to return emails and phone calls on a regular basis and to finish their work on time and in a professional way according to the Midwest Institute for Telecommuting Education (MITE)7. The workers who are offered the possibility to become teleworkers already fit the profile of a good teammate. Accountability is absolutely necessary when team members are in numerous different locations. Nevertheless, when a manager has to handle a team's work he needs to have real meetings with the team members in order to improve communication within the team. First it will strengthen the team's spirit as a group aiming towards the same goal. Second of all, the teleworkers can discuss face to face the means of communications used and their flaws. They can also explore new options to reach a total understanding among them. Finally what is efficient on the side of the worker can also be on the side of the manager. All the communication tools such as IM, videoconference, emails, group mails, voice mails, and phone calls should be considered by the manager as means to be fully aware of all the concerns and problems faced by the teleworkers. QUESTION 4. The question of virtual teamwork seen as a competitive advantage for business shall be considered from different aspects. First of all, telecommuting has to be approached in an international point of view. Until now our approach was mainly within the United States but companies are hiring teleworkers from all around the globe. This is mainly experienced in companies willing to provide services 24 hours a day. With an international team of telecommuters, the company has a wide range of workers available during peak times i.e. times when everyone, in every time zone, considers it to be part of a workday. Many studies as David Trickey's "Managing Multicultural Teamwork"8 have shown that cross cultural groups, when properly trained and perfectly integrated in the team can be highly efficient, much more than a single culture group. Continuing with that idea, it is possible for managers to recruit talented workers from other countries who do not want to relocate but may be more qualified and or less expensive than local workers. Nevertheless, if we remain within the borders of one state, like United States, we may observe the advantage of having a virtual team. First, as Christina Parr explained, the members of a virtual team are usually chosen from the office workers for their accountability and professionalism. These teleworkers are already considered as good team workers for their qualities, and these qualities such as accountability is a motor that will motivate the other members of the virtual team thus creating a highly efficient environment. The virtual team has, as we have also seen, a better sense of adaptation to the environment that is to say faster reactivity. If we look closer to the definition of competitive advantage, we shall ask ourselves, when we are focusing on virtual teams what are the elements that matches the criteria of competitive advantage. According to Wikipedia9 a competitive advantage shall be valuable, rare and inimitable. We have previously explained the value of a virtual team: working length shifts from 8 to 24 hours a day, firms are able to contract different talents even if they are in foreign countries, the accountability and reactivity of a virtual team can be greater than an office team. To what extend can we consider that a virtual team is rare First of all because the teleworkers that compose a virtual team are unique and can be from all around the globe. Here the value is directly linked with the rareness. By spotting talents managers create a virtual team both highly efficient and unique. The competitive advantage in terms of rareness also comes from the reactivity and the rapidity of the firm to create its virtual teams. The inimitable criterion is obviously connected to the previous notions of rareness and value. Nevertheless one shall not believe that they are similar. Inimitable when discussing the competitive advantage of a virtual team is not an adjective only addressing the telecommuters. When we explained the notion of rareness, it was obviously aimed to the people involved in the production process. However, a virtual team is inimitable thanks both to its workers and to the systems and procedures that specifically define the way of conducting business within a firm. A virtual team of teleworkers is inimitable because of the organization that the firm and thus the managers elaborate to reach a sustainable practice and development. However, virtual teams are a new model of organization in numerous industries. We believe that the accuracy of our explanation can not be set only within the boundaries of the criteria we have presented. The competitive advantage of these industries that recently turned to teleworkers and virtual teams have to be seen through a more careful eye. Previously, we gave the example of the Department of Defense creating more and more jobs for teleworkers. If we discuss its competitive advantage through value, rareness and uniqueness we might not find the same results as we did in this section. Nevertheless, it is obvious the Department of Defense will not create such virtual teams if its managers did not believe that it will create some kind of advantage. We therefore have to look to others elements such as flexibility or balance between work and family to understand the advantages that such as department gains from turning their workers into teleworkers. Part B As a company's competitive advantage becomes a strategic necessity over time, companies must strive to find a new and more endurable strategic advantage. Because of the importance of creating a sustainable competitive advantage in marketing theory, vast literature has covered this subject and the theme has been widely discussed. First of all, not all the characteristics of a company could become their strategic advantage. Based on the definition given before, ideally they would have to be rare, inimitable and valuable. Some of the company characteristics that could constitute a sustainable competitive advantage include: customer focus (based on the understanding and meeting the real needs and desires of consumers); customer lifetime value (emphasis on customer service and long-term customer satisfaction, rather than on maximizing short-term sales); superior product quality, extensive distribution contracts, accumulated brand equity (value built-up in a brand) and positive company reputation, low cost production techniques, patents and copyrights, government protected monopoly, superior employees and management team. (Wikipedia, see footnote 9). These characteristics include intrinsic values of the company such as low cost production, patents and copyrights; and there are other less permanent characteristics such as the company's reputation or customer focus. This means that the company can always find a strategy to highlight its immanent qualities and improve in dynamic areas such as customer service and positive reputation. For the characteristics that they already own, as it is already an advantage, what is needed is the advertising and communication of those characteristics. On the other hand, if you can find something that you do very well or that you could do better, that can become a competitive advantage, too. According to the work by Professor Michael Porter, "branding becomes the "advantage" when it identifies and exploits operational excellence, customer intimacy or product leadership in the experiential lens of the consumer". (Gossen and Gresham , 2005)10 Determining the sustainable competitive advantage is a function of branding research into the market needs, company's strengths and competitors' weaknesses. Where they overlap, the "sweet spot," is where the company has a strategic and sustainable competitive advantage. This study is detailed and inclusive of internal culture analysis, as well as traditional marketing research. Nothing is surer to prevent successful brand exploitation than a toxic corporate culture that cannot deliver a consistent brand promise. (Gossen and Gresham , 2005)11 Prahalad and Hamel (1990) for example, suggest that firms combine their resources and skills into core competencies, loosely defined as that which a firm does distinctively well in relation to competitors (Hoffman, 2000)12. Therefore, firms may succeed in establishing an SCA (sustainable competitive advantage) by combining skills and resources in unique and enduring ways. By combining resources in this manner, firms can focus on collectively learning how to coordinate all employees' efforts in order to facilitate growth of specific core competencies. The strategic advantage is therefore a combination, and not a single characteristic of the product or company. Other theorists comment that a competitive advantage (CA) can result either from "implementing a value-creating strategy not simultaneously being employed by current or prospective competitors or through superior execution of the same strategy as competitors" (Bharadwaj, Varadarajan, and Fahy 1993 in Hoffman, 2000). The CA is sustained when other firms are unable to duplicate the benefits of this strategy (Barney 1991 in Hoffman, 2000). The problem with this perspective is precisely how to find a strategy that is not already being employed, or having the creativity and resources to outstand the existing strategy of the other companies, in such a way that it becomes almost impossible for your competitors to reach your high standards, in short words, impose a new record. In another line of thinking, there are some articles about business strategies which argument that innovation, patent protection and the move to services will continue to be important; but the future advantage will be based on the ability to make the offerings more valued through the beneficial use of personal and private corporate data. "After accounting for all the technological advances of the past and future, your sustainable competitive advantage will rely on two very human characteristics: insight and trust."13 Conclusions It is true that in a fast changing competitive world, it becomes harder and harder for strategic advantages to be sustained in the long run. There is the idea that the only way of maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage is to build an organization that is always informed of what is happening within its industry, and uses that information to create the strategy that combines their skills and resources in order to make it the best in a certain category. Information technology can hardly achieve to be a sustainable competitive advantage in this panorama. First, because it is constantly changing and therefore it is hard to be always up to date in technology; and secondly, because an enduring advantage is built up with a combination of elements. It is not enough to have just one characteristic like technology, low costs, etc. The fact that at some point, all CA's could become the general rule (necessity) of companies can be viewed as a positive way of building a dynamic strategy; it cannot stay static because it will soon die among the strong competitiveness between firms, and it forces you to be aware of your weaknesses (areas of opportunity) and strengths. It is possible that only those companies that are constantly alert and agile will be able to find an advantage, no matter what changes occur in the world. Read More