Remote work
Telecommuting, telework, or working from home (WFH) is a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours (within limits). In other words, the daily commute to a central place of work is replaced by telecommunication links. The motto is that 'work is something you do, not something you travel to'. A successful telecommuting programme requires a management style which is based on results and not on close scrutiny of individual employees. This is referred to as 'managing by objective' as opposed to 'managing by observation'. The term 'telecommuting' was coined by Jack Nilles and was first used in the United States.
History
The first formal tests of telecommuting were held in 1973 and 1974 with the telecommuters working at a satellite office of an insurance company, using dumb terminals connected to a downtown mainframe. In the 1980s, employees began to work (part-time) from so-called 'home offices' with a desktop PC supplied by their company. Today, the telecommuting staff (telecommuters) usually carries laptop PCs around which they can use both at the office and at home (and almost anywhere else). The telecommuting staff are kept together by the company network and other telecommunication channels.
Telecommuting is seen as a solution to traffic congestion (due to single-car commuting) and the resulting urban air pollution and petroleum use. Initial investments in the network infrastructure and hardware are balanced by an increased productivity and overall greater well-being of telecommuting staff (more quality family time, less travel-related stress), which makes the arrangement attractive to companies, especially those who face large office overhead and other costs related to the need for a big central office (such as the need for extensive parking facilities).
Outcomes
Telecommuting options increase the employability of marginalised groups, such as mothers with small children, the handicapped and people living in remote areas. It can also reduce an individual's carbon footprint, through minimizing daily commuting. The set up also offers possibilities for increased service and internationalisation (telecommuters in different time zones can ensure that a company is virtually open for business around the clock). Telework has also enabled offshore outsourcing.
Current Trends
Telecommuters need not necessarily work from the home. A more recent extension of telecommuting is distributed work. Distributed work entails the conduct of organizational tasks in places that extends beyond the confines of traditional offices. It can refer to organizational arrangements that permit/require workers to perform work more effectively at any appropriate locations: at home, customers’ sites, etc, through the application of information and communication technology. An example is financial planners who meet clients during lunch time with access to various financial planning tools and offerings on their mobile computers, or publisher executives who recommend and place orders for the latest book offerings to libraries and university professors, among others. These work arrangements are likely to become more popular with current trends towards greater customization of services and virtual organizing. Distributed work offer great potential for firms to reduce costs, enhance competitive advantage and agility, access to a greater variety of scarce talents, and improve employee flexibility, effectiveness and productivity (e.g., Venkatesh and Vitalari, 1992; Korte, 1988; Sieber, 1996; Taylor, 1995). It has gained in popularity in the West, particularly in Europe. While it is gaining increasing importance, distributed work has not gained widespread acceptance in Asia yet (Sia et al., 2004).
See also
References
- Korte, W. B., “Telework – Potentials, Inceptions, Operations and Likely Future Situations,” in W. B. Korte, S. Robinson, and W. J. Steinle (Eds.), Telework: Present Situations and Future Development of A New Form of Work Organization, Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1988.
- Sia, C. L., Teo, H. H., Tan, B. C. Y., Wei, K. K., “Effects of Environmental Uncertainty on Organizational Intention to Adopt Distributed Work Arrangements,” IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 2004, 51(3), pp. 253-267.
- Sieber, P. "Virtuality as a Strategic Approach for Small and Medium Sized IT Companies to Stay Competitive in a Global Market," in J.I. DeGross, S. Jarvenpaa, and A. Srinivasan (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Information Systems, Cleveland, OH, 1996, pp. 468.
- Taylor, W. C., “At VeriFone, It’s a Dog’s Life (And they Love it),” Fast Company, 1995, 1(Premiere Issue), pp. 115-121. http://www.fastcompany.com/online/01/vfone.html.
- Venkatesh, A. and Vitalari, N. P., "An Emerging Distributed Work Arrangement: An Investigation of Computer-Based Supplemental Work at Home", Management Science, 1992, 38(12), pp. 1687-1706.