I have experience being “on” months at a time during
military mobilizations to war zones, and can attest first hand that all people
need quality “off” time. After a period of
extended “on” time, whether mobilized or tethered to a constantly-ringing
Blackberry, one will begin to lose motivation, focus and drive without quality
“down” time.
For purposes of this blog, I am coupling 24/7 connectivity
to teleworking for the simple reason that one cannot live at work all the
time. So, being connected 24/7 must
include a teleworking reality, whether formally recognized or expected by one’s
company or not.
The survey of pros
of 24/7 connectivity/teleworking include:
· Having the technology and employment option to work occasionally at home allows workers to simultaneously meet business and family needs, a major perk
· Reduces the need for “offshoring” of jobs and encourages works to live, work and shop locally
· Per survey by Lister and Harnish, teleworking:
o Positively impacts transportation demand management, energy conservation, and greenhouse gas emissions, and un- and under-employment
o Increases productivity
o Saves money (savings would total over $900 billion a year, enough to reduce our Persian Gulf oil imports by 46%), and interestingly
o Allows for ‘reasonable accommodation’ per the Americans with Disabilities Act (over 300K people regularly work from home)· According to Networkworld.com, “The distinction between being able to work from anywhere vs. occasionally telecommuting is important to job candidates who face long commutes and have to balance personal and family commitments.”
· Alice Hill, Managing Director of DICE, says in a blog post: "Telecommuting allows hiring managers to draw talent from outside their immediate labor pool, catching that tech professional whose skills and attitude fit, but proximity to the office is not ideal. We believe done well, the benefits of telecommuting outweigh the risks. With rising gas prices and a competitive job market, companies who want to be a part of the future, would be wise to leave inflexible work arrangements in the past."
· Pedersen and Madden, of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said recently in a report that “Companies that have embraced telecommuting have found that their remote workers are just as, if not more productive than traditional office workers. Analyses of Best Buy, British Telecom, Dow Chemical and many other employers have found that teleworkers are 35 percent to 45 percent more productive. American Express found that its teleworkers produced 43 percent more than their office-based counterparts."
Bottom
line, according to John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, “…various studies have found that
telecommuting employees are happier, more loyal, and have fewer unscheduled absences. All of
these outcomes positively impact the bottom line. However, they represent just
the tip of the iceberg when it comes to corporate finances. Companies that have
widely adopted telecommuting are realizing significant savings in many areas but,
most notably, real estate costs.”
But Challenger warns that telecommuting has real acceptance
barriers: “Companies are embracing the
latest portable tablets and laptops, social networking, video conferencing and
many of the other technological advancements that make telecommuting
increasingly viable. However, in many ways, companies are stuck in the old way
of doing business, where people are expected to work from 9 to 5 and are judged
more on the amount of ‘face time’ than on the quantity or quality of output.”
Which leads us to the myriad cons of 24/7 connectivity & teleworking:
· Per Lister and Harnish, “The biggest barrier to telecommuting, by a wide margin, is management fear and mistrust.”
· According to Networkworld.com, acceptance has “…little to do with remote capabilities and more to do with culture.” A few additional downsides include:
o A majority of teleworkers aren't putting in a full day's work
o Local managers make a difference to subordinate happiness and to an extent, productivity
o Employees believe it is a ploy to get more work out of them
o Managers proved unable to hold poor performers accountable
o Work quality decreases
o Employees feel disconnected without getting enough manager feedback
o Virtual workers tend to be less honest (the amount of lying was shown to be higher when compared to face-to-face conversations· A Santa Clara University study discussed several balancing-act life-issues such as:
o Does the work day ever come to a close?
o Can one be “offline or out of touch” and still be a responsible employee?
o Are vacations possible? Can one ever afford to be sick?
o How does one follow career aspirations and obtain financial stability, while taking family responsibilities seriously?
o What is the responsibility of an employer to ensure that work and personal time boundaries are established so health and well-being are maintained?
o What are the organizational cultural values that enable a business to foster sustainable work-life balance?
o How can ICT [information and communication technology] be applied in business situations in a manner that promotes quality of life?
Finally, in Undress For
Success—The Naked Truth About Working From Home (John Wiley & Sons,
March 2009), Telework Research Network (TRN) conducted a year-long study and
captured the advantages of teleworking for communities, for companies and for
employees.
Highlights from the study include:
Advantages of Telecommuting for the Community:
- Reduces our foreign oil dependence
- Slows global warming
- Bolsters pandemic and disaster preparedness
- Redistributes wealth
- Higher productivity among teleworkers will increase GDP
- Cost savings from telework will encourage home-shoring and bring back many of the jobs that have been lost to foreign labor
Advantages of Telecommuting for Companies
- Improves employee satisfaction
- Reduce attrition
- Reduces unscheduled absences
- Increases productivity
- Saves employers money
- Equalizes personalities and reduces potential for discrimination
- Cuts down on wasted meetings
- Increases employee empowerment
- Increases collaboration
- Provides new employment opportunities for the un and under-employed
- Expands the talent pool
- Slows the brain drain due to retiring Boomers
- Reduces staffing redundancies and offers quick scale-up and scale-down options
- Environmental Friendly Policies are Good For Companies
- Reduces traffic jams
- Prevents traffic accidents
- Take the pressure off our crumbling transportation infrastructure
- Insures continuity of operations in the event of a disaster
- Improves performance measurement systems
- Offers access to grants and financial incentives
Advantages of Telecommuting for Employees
- Saves employees money
- Increases leisure time
- Reduces stress, illness, and injury
- Teleworkers are exposed to fewer occupational and environmental hazards at home
- Teleworkers suffer fewer airborne illnesses because of lack of contact with sick co-workers
- Teleworkers report being able to make more time for exercise
- Anyone who has ever dieted knows it’s harder to stay the course when you dine out
- Teleworkers often eat healthier meals and are less inclined to consume fast food lunches
The Holdbacks to Teleworking
- Management mistrust
- It’s not for everyone, i.e social needs must be addressed
- Telecommuters must be self-directed
- Career fears from ‘out of sight out of mind’ mentality
- Co-worker jealousy
- Security issues
- IT infrastructure changes may be necessary
A) Outstanding post. Good information on multiple levels. Thank you
ReplyDeleteB) I don't want to admit what category I'm in in your graph on the cost of my commute. Suffice to say that I'm horrified when I can actually watch my gas gauge go down during some drives!
C) Will the advantages of telecommuting outweigh the societal/management pre-disposition to want command/control of their staff right in front of them? I know I have one employee who regularly works from home (our IT Director) and regardless of when I email her during the business day, or on a weekend, I get a response within minutes. So my concern level is zero. But I've had other employees who I know, based on productivity, must have had a challenging morning watching Gilligan's Island in their PJs. I can correct that issue, but my babyboomer brain (same age as you) kicks in and tell me "Danger, Danger, watch out for telecommuters!" I fight it, but I'll admit I have concerns.
Matt: I really like your C above. Some folks are connected but really aren't. And some are here and there but always respond quickly. Like anything, there has to be a mandate before there is acceptance or compliance. So, rules for connectivity will have to be established..meaning, there will be connectivity with rules.
DeleteI'll echo Matt's comment - outstanding post. Maybe us old f**ts need to die out and the world will become more productive. In my office at VCU - with a primary responsibility of faculty development, we recently hired two instructional designers and an instructional technologist. Three great people who uprooted, moved to Richmond, and show up to work 5 days a week. As the person who ran all three searchs, I can report that we turned away about 20% of applicants who wanted to do the job but not move to Richmond. Since the majority of our work is team based, we opted for on-site applicants only...but one wonders if we were wrong?
ReplyDeleteMy colleague Scott McLeod recently accepted a faculty job in University of Kentucky, but on the stipulation that he and his family remain in Iowa. He flew to KY twice a month for F2F meetings but did all other work as a Center Director via the web. Now, he is on leave from KY to run an experimental innovation center back in Iowa.
This may be the norm in a decade...but it still stands out as radical right now.
I'm with you as an old, well you know. Changing the culture is a Ed.D.-worthy dissertation!
DeleteAs soon as you mentioned Santa Clara University I knew we would be touching on some ethical issues. The Markkula Center there has some fabulous resources for discussion and the idea of remote workers is very much at the forefront of the business ethics discussion these days.
ReplyDeleteNot long ago, I was in a meeting where one of my colleagues (also an undergraduate department chair) got into a heated argument with the Dean of our school. My colleague inferred that the graduate faculty, who teach exclusively online and therefore are not physically present on campus to the extent undergraduate faculty are, were not really working as much as the undergraduate group. Fur flew! I had to intervene to prevent violence, at least of a verbal variety. The dean insisted that the grad faculty worked every bit as hard and as long as the undergraduate faculty. You see, in my colleague's perception, if you're not at work, you're not working.
The arguments you reported in favor of telecommuting are overwhelming. The problem I see that creeps in is what I think was bothering my colleague. He loves to come to campus by 7AM, leave for his mid-day run for about an hour to an hour and a half and then stay on campus until at least 6PM...every day. He also unfailingly comes to the office every Saturday morning (I should mention his commuting time is less than five minutes.) But he expects to do very little outside the office or classroom, to him that is where work is done. My Dean on the other hand established our online MBA program as his first job at the University, he proudly tells folks he taught his first online course from his sailboat.
What we have brewing here is a debate between the concepts of work (hours) and results. In the education side of things we have the same debate when trying to determine the proper format for courses that are online vs. on-ground. On-ground, we're still measuring seat time and the number of hours that are required for a three-credit course. Online, this is impossible to measure...is a common assessment of outcomes the answer? Accreditors as well as regulators are struggling with this issue. For example, should tuition be the same for each venue? Is financial aid reimbursement equal?
In the end, I'm still the guy who likes to be on campus, in front of my class, ranting away on something or other. When I'm doing administrative work I take great delight in walking into the other department's office to confront the "culprits."
Yet I've always held, for the entire span of my business and academic careers that professionals are engaged and compensated to achieve results.
Technology has changed the where and how....but not the what and why.
Work hours v. results: What a prime topic right now. The federal government is now requiring service contracts to be Performance Work Statements (results) vs. Statements of Work (hours and skill sets). You will never guess which side of the table (government or contractors) is having the much harder time...The gobvernment! They ONLY think in hours and skill sets and very little WRT results (at least in their contracting).
DeleteI think the solution is connectivity + engagement. Connectivity without engagement is what causes the distance to break down...
Thanks. Each week your responses are better written than my posts...cut me some slack. :)