Telecommuting and Improving Performance - Essay Example

? TELECOMMUTING by Introduction Telecommuting has been touted as the wave of the future as far as workplace trends go. This is due to the large number of individuals and corporations that are opting for this method of work against the physical work at the office model. Telecommuting basically is the idea where one works outside the confines of the conventional office space (Amigoni, 2009, 3). There are various benefits that have been attained by firms that have adopted this method as part of their human resources management strategy. While some have had success other firms have experienced a negative effect with their bid to try and adopt telecommuting policies. A recent incidence may have brought the issues that are raised by telecommuting to the fore and this was with the recently appointed chief executive (CEO) of Yahoo banning the telecommuting policy of the company. Discussions have been raised on whether this was a good move or not? What may have called for her action? How does this affect the future productivity of Yahoo as a company? There are a number of advantages that a company may stand to gain from adopting a telecommuting policy. The positives To begin with are the environmental advantages that are to be gained by this policy. The increase in the number of people who are telecommuting means that there are fewer people on the roads driving. This reduces the amount of emissions that are released into the atmosphere and that contribute to green house gases. The other advantage that is provided by telecommuting is that of a social nature and this is as concerns the family unit. Telecommuting is beneficial to parents especially mothers who are accorded the ability to juggle taking care of their young ones while still being able to attend to their office duties. This makes for a stronger family unit and also there is the provision of the needed amount of care given to the children. All this though point to the individual advantage of telecommuting. The idea though is to look at the whole picture from the perspective of the company and how beneficial or otherwise this will be to the company. Though it should be mentioned at the earliest that there exists different schools of thought on whether telecommuting is beneficial to a company or not but the overall opinion infers to it being more of beneficial. Improving performance Various different studies have been conducted that have looked at the improvements that a firm may get from having a section of its workers telecommuting to work. Some of these studies have found that telecommuting helps boost the performance of the workers and this has been attributed to a number of factors. One of these factors is the amount of time that is saved by workers who do not have to commute to work every day. Each day there is an increasing number of hours that workers spend on the road on their way to and from work. These hours can be better spent working on their various tasks if they telecommute. This savings are also in the fact that a large percentage of the workers are now not forced to endure traffic jams that also consume a lot of the time which limits the workers productivity. If this time is spent doing company related tasks and assignments they can help improve greatly on the output of the company (Johnson, 2001, 169). The other idea is in the fact that those who telecommute to work have been found to have an increased amount of productivity as compared to their colleagues who do not telecommute. One of these studies was done by Staples of which 93% of the surveyed employee agreed to the fact that telecommuting does a good job as far as improving productivity is concerned. This point was supported by over half of the decision makers in the company (Nina, 2013). This has been attributed to there being improved employee morale, lower employee absenteeism and reduced employee stress. All these factors worked to improve the performance of the employees at the workplace which was translated to better performance and consequently increased productivity. The other side There are various reasons that have been raised as to why it is that telecommuting does not really work well for certain firms yet other firms seem to apply it to their advantage. The one factor that needs to be considered is that of management. There are two levels in which management comes into play that would make telecommuting work for the best. One consideration is that the right amount of supervision still needs to be applied to the employees that are going to telecommute. This is by the fact that the lesser the supervision that is given to these employees the more relaxed they may become in the performance of their duties. Acceptability The other consideration that needs to be taken into mind is whether telecommuting would be best for the particular job description of those who are telecommuting. One study has shown that programmers are more accepting of telecommuting as their specific work requirements favor this arrangement (DeSanctis, 1984, 133). This may be attributed to the fact that the increasing number of those who work in the programming field usually do not need to commute to work and can easily perform their functions at any place that supports their needed capabilities. That is the right kind of connectivity. The same study also found out that this type of work arrangement was not so favored by project managers. A different study also established that where managers were telecommuters, the performance and productivity of the firm was impacted negatively (Golden & Fromen, 2011, 1451). This second study though contended that the effect of the telecommuting manger was based on the specific work arrangement that the subordinate had. Informal interactions Despite these advantages that have come to the fore, there are various arguments and studies that have proffered the idea that telecommuting may be having a negative impact on the work output of given employees. One of the schools of thoughts that have been used to explain this case is with the idea that in the workplace there are informal interactions. These informal interactions most often than not improve the creativity of the workers who work at a particular company. This thereby implies that those who telecommute may miss out on such opportunities that at the end of the day may improve their output by improving their productivity. There is also the case that is presented that even though this type of interaction can happen over the internet it does not lead to the same end. This is from the fact that a large number of those who are interacting over the internet in a telecommuting capacity may not be too trusting of their colleagues. To a certain extent it requires a face to face kind of communication to actually bring about the kind of trust and free information flow that would lead to actual creativity improvement (Aswathappa, 2005, 124). Conclusion The presentation of these evidences may seem to portray conflicting forms of evidence as to whether telecommuting is an effective company policy to be adopted or not. The fact is that there are an increasing number of those who find that telecommuting is helpful and the attitudes of workers and managers to those who telecommute are changing (Venkatesh & Johnson, 2006, 661). This study was able to show that this acceptance has mainly been attributable to the improvements that telecommunication has achieved. It is not that telecommunication achieves lesser success due to the unpreparedness of the company but due to the wrong management of the policy. The adoption of the policy with the right amount of correct management will yield a far greater degree of benefits to the specific firms. Reference list AMIGONI, M., & GURVIS, S. (2009). Managing the telecommuting employee set goals, monitor progress, and maximize profit and productivity. Avon, Mass, Adams Business. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=418090. ASWATHAPPA, K. (2005). Human resource and personnel management: text and cases. New Delhi, Tata McGraw-Hill. DeSanctis, G. 1984. Attitudes towards telecommuting: Implications for work-at-home programs. Information & Management, 7(3), p.133-139. Golden, T. D. & Fromen, A.2011. Does it matter where your manager works? Comparing managerial work mode (traditional, telework, virtual) across subordinate work experiences and outcomes. Human Relations, 64(11), p.1451-1475. JOHNSON, N. J. (2001). Telecommuting and virtual offices issues and opportunities. Hershey, Pa, IGI Global (701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey, Pennsylvania, 17033, USA). Lipman, V. 2013. Best Buy, Yahoo And Telecommuting: The Problem Isn't Distance - It's Management. Forbes, [online] 7 March. Available at < http://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/03/07/best-buy-yahoo-and-telecommuting-the-problem-isnt-distance-its-management/ > [Accessed 4 April 2013] Nina, A. 2013. Yahoo, [online] 4 March. Available at < http://finance.yahoo.com/news/survey-shows-telecommuting-provides-better-130000657.html > [Accessed 4 April 2013] Venkatesh, V. & Johnson, P. 2006. Telecommuting technology implementations: a within and between subjects longitudinal field study. Personnel Psychology, 55(3), p.661-687. Read More