The Benefits of Telecommuting - Assignment Example

Literature Reviews Telecommuting Telecommuting in the recent years has gained a lot of popularity among both the employees and employers world over. The trend is soon catching up across all industries. There are various advantages of telecommuting benefiting both the employee and the employer. In simple words, telework or telecommuting is an arrangement between the employee and the employer wherein the employee enjoys the flexibility in working with respect to hours and location. That is, it is working at home and at the same time being linked to various aspects of a business such as employer, client and customer through telecommunication means such as telephone or a computer. The claim of increase in the trend of telecommuting is backed by the findings of numerous researchers. 20% of the workforce in the US in involved in some kind of telecommuting work. Also there has been a 10% increase in the number of employees telecommuting at least 1 day in a month. The number has increased from 26.1 million to 28.7 million in 2005 to 2006. It was estimated that by 2010 this number would have reached 100 million. IT industry has seen a consistent increase in the number of employees telecommuting. The potential of telecommuting is immense as it is estimated that over the next 12 years, the number will increase manifold and around 19 million employees will indulge in some kind of telecommuting activity. There are various advantages of telecommuting and I would definitely like to be a teleworker. Telecommuting offers numerous benefits with respect to economy, environment and quality of life. It creates a win-win situation for the employee, employer and the community. As an individual, apart from being an employee, there are various personal and social responsibilities to be fulfilled. Telecommuting makes it easy for an individual to combine work responsibilities with other social and personal responsibilities/roles as an individual. Following are the various advantages that telecommuting offers to an employee to manage the numerous roles and responsibilities apart from those of work: Work-Life Balance: The most important challenge that a modern day employee faces in today’s highly challenging and competitive work environment is to strike a balance between work and personal life. The pressures of corporate environment are immense and this leaves little time for an employee to fulfil his/her personal and social responsibilities. Telecommuting addresses this issue and allows an employee to strike work-life balance. Telecommuting gives an employee ample time to fulfil his other responsibilities as he/she will have the flexibility of working at any location and time. The actual time to commute the physical location to work is cut down and hence this time can be used by the employee for other activities. Travelling Time: Travelling time is major hurdle for an employee. Commuting eats away majority of the time of an employee. This loss in times consumes quality time from the personal life of an employee. Telecommuting offers a solution to this problem as the travel time in telecommuting is literally zero. There is no travel time involved and hence leaving the employee with quality time to utilise. Personal Productivity and Better Quality of Life: Personal productivity automatically increases as a result of minimised or no travel time. This means that a telecommuter can use this time profitably to create personal value as well as value to the employer. That is personal productivity is translated into overall productivity. Also the living costs are reduced immensely as a result of cut down in travel costs. The freedom of working from home also makes it possible for telecommuters to move from metropolitan areas to internal or non-metropolitan areas. Telecommuters are left with more time to indulge in activities that they love which earlier would have been consumed by numerous work activities. This balance or equality creates a better quality for a telecommuter. Employment Opportunity: Telecommuting creates employment opportunities for those employees who can continue working in the tradition work model such as single parents, senior citizens, employees on maternity leaves, etc. Telecommuting makes it possible for such employees to work from home and make a positive use of their time as well as make a contribution. There are various hindrances to the implementation of a telecommuting work model. One of the major barriers to telecommuting is that it is not compatible with all jobs. Not all jobs can be completed from home. Also the success of telecommuting depends of the technological viability. Broadband availability plays an important role. Monitoring and accessing the performance of telecommuters is still a major challenge for managers and this is one of the reasons why businesses are reluctant towards such a model. Overall, telecommuting is business strategy of the future and the trend will only increase. More and more businesses will realise the potential and the benefits that telecommuting offers and will switch towards such a model. Even though there are many barriers to implementation of telecommuting strategy, the benefits overweigh the hurdles. A telecommuting business model is a lot more attractive to both the employee and employer and creates a win-win situation for all the stakeholders involved. Human Resource Management Human resources are the most important asset of an organization. Quality human resources give an organization competitive advantage over its competitors. Hence the management of the human resources of an organization is vital for the overall success of the organization. The management of the employees of an organization is known as human resources management and it takes qualified and capable individuals to manage the human resources. Human resource as a profession is questioned by many as it is considered to be a soft skill and does not have any direct impact on the productivity or success of an organization. But this is not true. Even though the effects of human resource management are not measurable and directly visible, it cannot be discarded. Human resource management as an occupation has a bright future with opportunities and necessity increasing. Today’s business has become more dynamic. Organizations are changing at a tremendous pace and have become extremely dynamic. The work place today is not limited to a defined boundary but has exceeded all boundaries. Concepts like telecommuting, globalization and offshore outsourcing have shrunk the distances by large. Distance today is no issue and organizations are spread across countries and continents. Workforce is more dynamic than ever with employees from different cultural background and ethnicities working in tandem. Hence, in the future management of human resources is going to be more challenging than ever. Human resources of an organization spread across great distances and with different backgrounds cannot be managed the same way. There needs to be different strategies adopted to deal with different set of employees. Employee motivation, employee satisfaction, utilising full potential of employees, etc will all need specific skills and hence dedicated human resource professionals become a necessity in the future. Unlike in the past, managers and supervisors will not be able to dawn the hats of human resource professional. Human resources professional in the future will have more of a strategic responsibility rather than just managerial responsibility. In the past, the main responsibility of human resource professionals was to address the traditional issues related to employees. But this is changing and there is a need for human resource professionals to indulge in both strategic and administrative roles. Human resource professionals will take an active part in the strategic planning and aligning numerous human resource processes with the overall business strategy of the organization. Human resource professionals will come out of their shell of handling administrative roles and be more involved in the overall activities of an organization. The various important competency domains in an organization are strategic management, business knowledge, management of talent, employee relations, Quality of work-family life and information technology. Going further human resource professionals will play a key part in all the competencies and hence the need for human repource professionals will only increase. The deliverables of human resource professionals is now being clearly defined and the focus is moving from doing a better job to accomplishing the deliverables. HR mechanisms are now being created and developed which allow the management of an organization to identify and analyse the actual results and the value created by the human resource team in an organization. This will encourage more and more organizations to have a dedicated human resource team. In the past, this was not the case as there were no well defined ways of measuring the results of the human resource team and hence, the HR responsibilities were shared by other managers and supervisors in an organization. The roles of a HR professional are now diversified and are not just limited to administrative roles. A HR professional will now act as a strategic partner, employee champion and change agent with each of the roles having a clear outcome. As a strategic partner the HR professional will be responsible for designing and implementing HR strategies and practices. The outcome is effectively executing the strategy. The various activities such as staffing, training, appraising, rewarding, promoting etc will fall under administrative role. As a change agent, a HR professional will be responsible for identifying change processes and, facilitating and implementing the change processes. Also, the day-to-day issues and concerns of the employees will also have to be addressed by the HR professionals. Increase in responsibilities of HR professional means that there will be an increase in the demand for HR professionals in the future. It is evident from the above discussion that human resource management as an occupation will only increase in the future. The reason for this is the diversification and expansion of the roles and responsibilities of human resource professionals. Also, unlike in the past there are now clearly defined processes that help in analysing the actual effect of human resource management in the organization. Links to Articles Telecommuting 1. http://www.itif.org/files/Telecommuting.pdf 2. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/womens/chap37.pdf 3. The Benefits of Telecommuting Human Resource Management 1. http://www.usimr.org/IMR-2-2010/v6n210-art2.pdf 2. http://www.usimr.org/IMR-2-2010/v6n210-art1.pdf 3. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/International-Journal-Strategic-Management/190700019.html Read More