Wired workplace demands adjustments - Telecommuting - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

While numerous companies have been quick to adapt to the opportunities to do business using the Internet, they still are grappling with the management challenges the wired workplace presents. Nowhere are the challenges greater than in telecommuting, maintains Brad Alge, an assistant professor in the Krannert Graduate School of Management, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., whose research is in the changes technology is bringing to organizations. He says there is no one authoritative source on the number of telecommuters nationally. He cites a realistic numbers as "somewhere between 7,000,000 (from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) and 20,000,000 (International Telework Association and Council)....

"Companies have embraced the Internet as a way to recruit, select, and retain employees," Alge notes. "It is now expanding into organizations' training and development efforts." Yet, management, by and large, still hasn't succeeded in coming to terms with telecommuting. Computers and communication systems are becoming sophisticated and powerful enough that many employees can accomplish just as much sitting in a bathrobe at a desk at home--or with a laptop and cell phone at the beach for that matter--as at their desk in the office. However, for some would-be telecommuters, slow, dial-up computer modems can still be a limiting technological factor.

There are bottom-line benefits to telecommuting from the employer's point of view, he says, in that it is less expensive to provide office space for 10 employees than for 100, and early studies show that telecommuters' productivity tends to improve. So why haven't more companies adopted telecommuting? "It's still a difficult sell to management," Alge explains. "Telecommuting demands that management examine how the policies it institutes affect employees." For some workers, it obviously just won't work. "You can't have employees manufacture widgits on an assembly line at home." Telecommuting can work for knowledge workers since it may be the perfect arrangement for occupations such as computer programming, accounting, editing, and some clerical work.

A key question for management to address is just who gets to telecommute and who doesn't. "What are the selection mechanisms?" Alge asks. "Telecommuters have to be disciplined self-starters. Not everyone is cut out to telecommute. There is also an equity issue. Employees not chosen to telecommute may harbor resentments, which can undermine a company's telecommunication efforts."

He cautions that management should not scrimp on telecommuters' home office set-ups. "You have to invest in powerful computers [and] high-speed modems and even set up a technical help line so telecommuters can get quick solutions to computer problems." Employers also have to take a new approach to employee evaluation when they can't see their employees working in the office. "Evaluation has to be based more on results--objective, numerical, and quantifiable evaluation systems for assessing employee performance."

Beyond developing telecommuting policies, employers have to deal with deeper issues of employees' adopting an organization's values and culture when they aren't spending five days a week in the office, Alge emphasizes. "How does not interacting with coworkers every day affect the organization?" This brings up the question of how many days a week employees are allowed to telecommute. In order for them to identify with and commit to the goals of a company, regular meetings and even social events become more important in the collective life of the organization.

One of the biggest barriers to telecommuting is employers' attitudes. "Every new technology brings resistance," he points out. "You have to have user acceptance before there can be successful implementation." The acceptance of telecommuting demands a major adjustment--redefining work so that it connotes more of what an employee does and less about where he or she does it.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group