- flexible working hours and reduced commute times

- reduced stress

- minor health ailments do not affect employee productivity, since employees can work from home at least part of the time in such circumstances.

Thus, overall productivity is improved because the more desirable and attractive working conditions result in higher levels of employee motivation.

Various state legislatures have started taking active steps to encourage telecommuting to try and take advantage of uits various benefits. For example, the Florida Legislature has addressed telecommuting and defined it relative to state workers in Section 110.171(3) of the Florida Statues:

"...a work arrangement whereby selected state employees are allowed to perform the normal duties and responsibilities of their positions, through the use of computers or telecommunications, at home or another place apart from the employees' usual place of work."

Many of the personnel and legal issues raised by telecommuting need to be resolved. These include new laws to cover electronic workplace issues, covering electronic searches, workplace privacy, monitoring, network safety, ergonomics, employment discrimination, worker's compensation, and overtime. More information about these issues can be found in June Langhoff's book, The Telecommuter's Advisor."

The Numbers

The most substantial savings were in reduced real estate costs. By allowing employees to telecommute, AT&T was able to close an entire office complex.
Annual Real Estate Savings: $6,333,124.

In addition to hard cost savings, there were substantial productivity gains. AT&T, based on employee interviews, estimates a conservative gain of two and a half hours per employee per week in time worked.
Annual gain due to increased productivity: $5,112,841.

Also, employees state almost without exception that they were able to be more productive during the hours they worked, due primarily to fewer interruptions.
Annual gain due to increased efficiency: $3,127,617.

There were, of course, start-up costs associated with setting up employees to work at home. Office alterations averaged $3,000 per employee and computer/phone installations averaged $4,000 per employee. These costs were depreciated over five years and $1,250 per employee per year was added for phone, fax, copy and postage bills.
Annual costs: $3,205,507.

AT&T Cost Savings & Productivity Gains

The Case Against Telecommuting

Technological Factors

Management and Industrial Organization

• The big problem for employers is control -- both performance and social control. Monitoring performance is more difficult for those working at home. Managers often do not recognize the contributions made by teleworkers because they are not physically present at work during the day. This in turn affects performance reviews and affects promotions, penalizing telecommuters.
• Related to this, telecommuting employees often feel left out of the company or project process and feel left out of the loop on various decisions. In addition, teleworkers are often not set clear performance goals by their managers, who sometimes associate useful work with physical presence, and vice versa.

Human and Societal Factors

• Excessive telecommuting has been known to lead to worker isolation, procrastination and boredom and this could lead to professional and personal problems.
• The social aspects of work, such as impromptu discussions around the water cooler or in a cafe, are missed by telecommuters. While such activities may seem counter-productive, when done in moderation, they significantly improve productivity. Occassional distractions are actually quite beneficial.
• According to Langhoff, because their office can be anywhere they park their portable, workaholic telecommuters often find it difficult to end their day. And on the other side, temptations such as a much-too-handy refrigerator, neighbors who think work-at-homers aren't really working, household chores, and family distractions can easily undermine others.

For many telecommuters, the expected homelife benefits were overromanticized, and the career costs underestimated, due to the points made above. In the following section, we discuss the determinants of success, where we present possible solutions to these impediments.

• Technology: Clearly, increasing network bandwidths and the development of more symmetric, high-speed network access technologies for residential users will hasten the degree of telecommuting from today's rather small (but increasing) numbers. But it's not just the technology that matters, as we have seen; the following two points elaborate on two important determinants of the success of telecommuting programs.

• Management methods: Improved management techniques are needed to manage teleworkers, and this will lead to rapid increases in productivity. Clear and crisp performance goals are essential, and this helps sets targets for employees, establishes guidelines by which managers can perform reviews, and results in better planning. Traditionally, many managers manage by process rather than by results, a method that needs to change. Put another way in the words of a successful CEO, "Manage not the way school teachers do, by attendance, but the way college professors do, by results."

  These improved management techniques will result in improved productivity overall, because of clearly established targets for telecommuting employees. Thus, telecommuters act as incentives for managers to set crisp performance goals for their projects, and this in turn improves performance. However, this is a two-edged sword -- managers unwilling to change their management style will result in a failure of an organization's telecommuting program.

• Organizational support: As a result, it is important for any successful telecommuting program to have the support and blessings of higher-level management. In fact, an important observation we can make from the various telecommuting case studies is that the success of these programs is very dependent on the degree of executive "buy-in" into these efforts. In fact, we can generalize this to most efforts that involve the adoption of collaborative technologies. Executive and managerial support and belief in the programs are crucial to their success. This point has been made by some others as well, e.g., Coleman.

Summary

However, despite these advantages and technology capabilities, telecommuting is not a done deal. Managerial and executive support, and changing management styles are crucial to the success of telecommuting programs in any organization.

Future Outlook

Distance learning

Contents