Let's get it straight about telecommuting! A reply - to Fiona McQuarrie's 'Telecommuting: Who Really Benefits'

Business Horizons, July-August, 1995 by Robert Moskowitz

This article was written in reply to "Telecommuting: Who Really Benefits?" by Fiona McQuarrie, which appeared in the November-December 1994 issue of Business Horizons. "Questions and Answers About Telecommuting Programs," by Robert C. Ford and Frank McLaughlin, published in the May-June 1995 issue, is also discussed.

To the uninitiated, Fiona McQuarrie's article "Telecommuting: Who Really Benefits?" could certainly seem authoritative and unbiased. But to anyone who has experience as a telecommuter, a manager of telecommuters, a consultant to either of those parties, or--like me--president of the first and largest association of active telecommuters, there are numerous errors of fact and interpretation in the article that negatively color both the characterization of telecommuting and the conclusions one might draw about its costs and benefits. The article was, in my opinion, terribly flawed; and although the subsequent publication of Ford and McLaughlin's "Questions and Answers About Telecommuting Programs" presents a more accurate picture of telecommuting, it unfortunately does very little to correct the erroneous impressions left in readers' minds by the earlier article.

Early on, McQuarrie errs badly when she asserts, "Telecommuting has only been possible on a large-scale basis since the early 1980s, when computer technologies evolved to the point at which personal computers were capable of being electronically linked to a larger, separate operating system." Certainly, the timing she mentions corresponds to a surge in the number of telecommuters in American and world-wide organizations. But her statement fails to take account of the great deal of the work telecommuters do that is entirely independent of computers or other technology. In defining and explaining telecommuting, Ford and McLaughlin also ignore the many non-technological cases, and mention as examples only people using computers in telework.

McQuarrie is wrong again when she writes: "Telecommuting technology also restricts how the work can be performed. Because computerization makes telecommuting possible, the only telecommuting work that can be successfully performed at home, obviously, is that involving the use of computers or telephones." Much telecommuting work need not make use of computers or telephones at all, except at odd times when telecommuters report in or ask questions of others. For example, millions of telecommuters in the United States and around the world are actively involved in thinking, planning, writing, analyzing, drawing, and other work that, though supportable by computers, does not require any technology whatsoever.

The five jobs she cites as most suited to telecommuting--computer programmer, translator, software engineer, sales representative, and systems analyst--are certainly among the favorites. But such a selection is based on criteria that explicitly include "suitability for computer work." This unnecessarily and inaccurately skews the list of "most suited" jobs toward the technical end of the spectrum.

Such an approach ignores large populations of active telecommuters who carry such diverse job titles as accountant, administrator, agent, analyst, architect, auditor, bookkeeper, broker, college professor, communications specialist, composer, consultant, contract manager, copywriter, department supervisor, designer, editor, engineer, estimator, graphics artist, interior decorator, journalist, landscape architect, lawyer, loan officer, manager, order taker, paralegal, radiologist, reporter, researcher, salesperson, social worker, teacher, telemarketer, telephone operator, trader (stocks, bonds, commodities), travel agent, underwriter, word processor, and writer.

McQuarrie further argues, "A closer examination of the benefits and drawbacks... [of telecommuting]... indicates that many of the 'benefits' for the employee actually represent benefits gained by the organization through passing employment-related expenses and responsibilities to the worker." Her mistaken assumption here is that benefits are a zero-sum game, and that every gain for the employer is a loss for the telecommuting employee. Has she never heard of a win-win situation? If one considers the employee benefits she lists in her table--reduced commuting time, reduced personal costs, flexible working hours, and greater autonomy, to name a few--it becomes obvious that for the telecommuter the positive value of these benefits does not disappear just because the employer may also gain from the situation.

In fact, telecommuting is more accurately described as a win-win-win situation. The employee/telecommuter gains certain personal and economic benefits, the employer gains clear economic and productivity benefits, and society gains as well----through reduced traffic, pollution, energy usage, and the like. There are very few losers in most firms' telecommuting programs, except perhaps those who are not yet allowed to be part of them.

Ford and McLaughlin do not make this mistake, but their article focuses more on procedures and characteristics of successful programs and telecommuters rather than explicitly on benefits. They do note in passing, however, that half of their respondents see "no difference" in productivity between office-bound workers and telecommuters, while the other half see their telecommuters as "more productive." No one in that survey felt telecommuters were less productive than workers limited to the more traditional workplace mode.