Telecommuting

Telecommuting

Telecommuting has increasingly become a popular mode of work generating significant interest from practitioners alike. With recent technological advancements that allow mobile connectivity at affordable rates, working out of an office environment as a telecommuter has become increasingly common for many workers around the globe. Since the introduction of telecommuting in the 1970s, practitioners and scholars have argued the advantages of working away from the office, which is a representation of how organizations have done business historically. Making efforts complicated to truly understand the effects of telecommuting have been the highly varying conceptualizations and definitions of telecommuting and diversification of the field undertaking the research. The main objective of this article is to review existing telecommuting research to better understand the scientific community’s knowledge about telecommuting and the consequences. In this fulfilment, there shall be discussions about some intricacies linked with research on telecommuting to understand better the benefits and drawbacks regarding telecommuting. in the paper we will focus on not only the common understanding about telecommuting but also on what is yet learned to fully understand the increasingly important work mode. Telecommuting has an associated term which is remote working which refers to a more flexible working arrangement with workers working In remote locations away from their offices or production facilities with efficient technological communication associated with minimal contact.  

Is telecommuting just the "current trend" due to the coronavirus pandemic? 

Before the pandemic, telecommuting was not widely used in global practices.  Even though a recent survey by the American Community Survey indicated that the number of employees from the USA who worked from home at least half of the time was 3.9 million in 2017 rising from 1.8 million in 2005, telecommuting at that instance was just 2.9 percent of the total US working population. Also in Europe, only an approximation of 2 percent of the employees teleworked by the year  2015. for high-income earners, remote working has proven to be a luxury for the relatively affluent. Due to the COVID-19 situation, the majority of the workers had minimal remote working expertise with also minimal preparedness of the respective organizations for supporting the practice. With the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020 has required many people globally into being telecommuters, involuntarily causing a global experience in experimenting with remote working becoming the abrupt new normal. 

With a sufficient understanding of the challenges and risks faced by telecommuters during the pandemic, it requires deep research in the remote working field. However with fact that there was minimal research on telecommuting prior as compared to the unprecedented scale of research being conducted during the pandemic, associated with the time demands. This experience was accompanied by insufficient previously accumulated knowledge on telecommuting and contextual significance in the COVID-19 crisis. This opens for investigations on how this context has molded the experience of working remotely. The telecommuting knowledge existing has been generated from a context involving occasional or infrequent emote working practice which was only considered by some the organizations and workers. The occasional and infrequent telecommuting practice has rendered mute many supposed individual outcomes for the vast telecommuting population causing a huge difference in personal results between extensive telecommuters and those doing it infrequently affecting the outcomes of the practice. 

Additionally, the hugely voluntary nature of initial telecommuting has led to previous findings from a sea selection bias initially identified benefits of telecommuting to particularly be true for those capable or interested in engaging to work remotely. When exposed to a situation where teleworking is a mandatory requirement or a compulsory order rather than a discretionary option, it calls for understanding if to implement remote working or not and the manner to get the most out of telecommuting. Such a research focus shifting requires a systematic understanding of the potential nature of work changes in the different environments. The population engaging in telecommuting rose by a percentage more than twice that before the pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak accelerated the telecommuting trends, as lockdowns and quarantines caused the impossibility for a significant number of people to commute and work in offices globally. 

Telecommuting provided a viable solution during the pandemic, with employees doing their roles flexibly away from their respective work environments supported by specialized technological advancements. This eliminated the need to commute to workplaces while maintaining connections with colleagues and clients. To enable remote working, the employees depend on remote work arrangements enabling hybrid work which was majorly preferred to enhance safety during the COVID-19 pandemic drawing in more users. To necessitate telecommuting, supporting technologies are required including personal computers, and video conferencing software such as zoom, and the employer considering new techniques of communication and resources. These technologies were still available before the COVID-19 pandemic but gained demand during the pandemic period when many companies considered them for efficient remote services. The COVID-19 response has shown how hybrid work models are not essentially an inhibition to work productivity. There has been a general agreement on the different telecommuting models to persist to post-pandemic. The majority of the employers have appeased the benefits of flexible and remote working arrangements, covering the positive results of employee satisfaction surveys and potentially minimizing office space. The majority of employees also plan more on telecommuting, with a significant number of workers expecting telecommuting as a benefit of employment. 

Application of work design perspective while researching telecommuting practice during the COVID-19 pandemic, observation of powerful charities of virtual work is expected in molding job experiences. The pandemic has not significantly reformed the working culture for the majority of employees even after changing the manner of doing their job. A good percentage of telecommuters argue of satisfaction with their job now than before the introduction of telecommuting and that there have been minimal changes in their productivity and the issue of job security. Motivation arises with similar opportunities for job advancement and meeting supervisors’ demands as it were before telecommuting. This has led to a clear upside linked with the change to telework calling for more flexibility in deciding on hourly productivity. A substantial increase has been experienced compared to the share of telecommuters working from home entirely or partially before the pandemic. In addition, persons involved in telecommuting have been able to manage and learn and balance work with family responsibilities reducing their downtime and increasing productivity. Consequently, acknowledging any contextually arising issue is of utmost importance in empowering a hybrid working society and ensuring a smooth change to more flexible working models.   

Which industries may benefit the most from telecommuting? Which industries may be negatively impacted by telecommuting? 

Firstly, the industry of Professional, Scientific, and Technical services benefits immeasurably from telecommuting. this industry has a large number of telecommuters relative to its share of the workforce Thee services offered by professionals in this industry include legal representation and advice, engineering and research, bookkeeping, and advertising. This field majorly entails science and research where a majority of their resources are available on the internet. Their major requirement is professional-client connectivity through a personal computer and good internet connectivity (O'Brien & Aliabadi (2020)). Quite a several companies and jobs for scientists wanting to work remotely are highly available in a diversity of professionalism. Secondly, there is the Information and Technology industry. The information sector offers a vast number of telecommuters globally. The specified telecommuting jobs in the information industries include web developing, application software development, and information and technology project management. Similarly, these field resources are highly available on the internet offering flexibility in work. Remote computers usually available for IT jobs offers robust opportunities for a flexible working environment with growing momentum. Other industries that are highly likely to benefit from the growing telecommuting field are finance and insurance, real estate and rental and leasing, wholesale trade industry, health care, and social assistance, and the public administration industry.  These benefits are major to the employee and the management of the prerequisite industries. 

The benefits of telecommuting include; allowing for better work-life balance for many businesses. This ability between the two sides of the world which are the working environment and the home life has brought up a happier feeling and more productivity while working. The time spent initially commuting to the workplace is saved allowing employees to improve work-life balance adding daily productive hours. Also, there is increased freedom for employees which is advantageous since it boosts happiness, engagement, and fulfilment. This comes due to the ability of the employee to remotely perform their daily duty alongside other duties that would call for a traditional employee to apply for time off. This freedom makes the employee have a maximized engagement during the day and improves on fulfilling the majority of their daily activity with the most efficient scheduling. Working remotely promotes the well-being of an employee with reduced stress thus improving the health and personal wellness and limiting exposure to potential health risks exposure while commuting and in the workplace environment. The flexible work and the schedule allow for inclusion in company wellness programs like gym access. Telecommuting would save companies money example in the service industry. Few office employees reduce business costs. Fewer employees call for minimal space utilization and more efficient workspace usage reducing monthly rent and billing for the organization. Due to these positive business impacts, there is an increase in competition. This time it’s the people who drive business success. Because of the self-driven team’s efficiency and seeing through the health and growth of the business plan. Attracting and retaining top talent in the company working environment is a differentiator in the competitive business world today. Remote working offers a positive sense of employer and employee personal recognition making a difference while making the next career move. 

Telecommuting has a downside mainly in the manufacturing and food processing industries. Telecommuting blocks organizations from creating and solidifying their organizational culture. The organization’s culture is built by the employees coming together and doing some team-building activities and engaging in physical company meetings which is hard to accomplish with a disjointed team. With employees identifying with companies’ virtues, they get more engaged in their work which is important in the workplace environment. This worker engagement boosts customer loyalty, productivity, and accountability. Employee engagement is usually a great challenge for companies with high employee turnover rates. Minimal employee physical interactions are conducive to making good relationships with fellow workers as with physical office meetings. This inhibits the development of coworker expectation setting. Physical interactions with colleagues make them get the performance standards and communication more quickly than in virtual communication. 

Social interactions are highly connected to engagement and satisfaction. Employee interactions allow for learning of better working techniques through observation and direct information maintaining a standard of production with minimal variation of results amongst employees. This is due to an easier communication factor among employees engaged physically compared to employees communicating virtually, one of the employees may be busy tending to other basic chores thus unable to timely assist on a challenge. There is also developed isolation feeling among telecommuters. The isolation feeling comes later after the employee has worked long hours from home which is detrimental to mental health. This is due to the factor that human beings are social creatures and long-term isolation makes the employee feel cut off leading to anxiety. Minimal physical contact among employees lowers the development of connection, trust, and mutual purpose increasing chances for office political struggles and organizational management weakening. It is harder to foster enthusiasm for the construction and growth of a business. It is hard to stimulate enthusiasm about your product or service without adequate social engagement unless your employees have total intrinsic motivation.

   Are there possible environmental effects of telecommuting? If so, are they negative or positive?

Telecommuting offers vast impacts not only on the employees, freelancers, and organizations but also on the environment. In particular, in these times when climatic changes are more frequent society needs to think of improvements that can be made including sustainable working behavior. Telecommuting offers significant positive impacts while working from home. Firstly, there is reduced emission of greenhouse emissions. The main advantage of remote work is skipping the commute to the work schedule. By working remotely you not only save on time but also on fuel costs or public transport expenses. These minimal movements also lower their respective carbon footprints thus a reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Global Workforce Analytics gives an estimation that if everyone working in offices would work remotely for just half of the week, the global emissions would reduce by 54 million tons per year. The transportation sector is a major source of greenhouse gasses with the respective major contributors being passenger cars and light-duty vehicles and trucks. The implementation of efficient telecommuting techniques would greatly save the environment since the traffic load would reduce significantly lowering emissions to a degree equivalent to planting billions of trees to reduce those emissions. Secondly, there is a reduction in fossil fuel consumption. Based on the fact that the major fuel in the transportation sector is petroleum products, fossil fuels play a key role in climate change. If telecommuting would be embraced in today’s working environment, a huge amount of road traffic would be reduced. This reduction would consequently reduce fuel utilization. This would lower petroleum product demand and the consequent environmental risks involved in their extraction and transportation. This risk involves the oil spillage risk, potential fires, and pollution involved in petroleum products extraction. 

In addition to that, there is better air quality. Vehicle fumes exhausted while commuting to workplaces would be managed significantly each day if people could agree to work remotely. This would improve the air quality significantly mainly in urban areas. This improved air quality would lower respiratory infections affecting many people due to bad air quality. Highway vehicles contribute alone more than a quarter of the total nitrogen dioxide emissions. These emissions are considered attributed to respiratory diseases including asthma or infections. Also, there is minimized paper usage. The frequency with which paper is utilized in offices is reduced in telecommuting. Instead of print paper usage common in office premise communication, more soft communication means are used including WhatsApp groups and emails. If a print version would be necessary while working from home one would need a personal printer and would be more economic about it. With paper usage reduction there would be a reduced demand in the paper industry thus reducing the number of trees falloff annually significantly thus protecting the environment. 

Similarly, plastic consumption would reduce. While telecommuting, you certainly use more disposable plastics compared to the office environment. While working from the office plastics utilization tends to rise, for example, packed foods and beverages from eateries and the supermarket, and the many files used to keep daily records and invoices. It is hard to come up with a figurative number in proving the amount of extraneous plastic waste found in an office environment. This defers in home premises where proper reusable dishware and preparation are used not requiring further packaging. This reduction in the number of disposable plastics attempts to control of world’s plastic crisis. This has a positive environmental effect since plastic waste management is very challenging due to the nature of plastic not to decompose. These plastics tend to block sewer lines and poor plastic waste, handling reduces the environmental aesthetics. Moreover, telecommuting reduces infrastructure impact. In many cities, there is an increasing demand for transportation infrastructure evident through traffic jams during rush hours. Rush hours indicate the hours when the majority of the city population are dashing to reach their subsequent homes from workplaces of proceeding to their working places avoiding late work hours. During the peak commutation hours, there is increased fuel consumption and emissions. The extensive traffic increases the magnitude of damage impacted on highways and the streets increasing demands for repair and expansion. The consequence of this to the environment is that there is land degradation in regions where the ballast and extra soil needed will come from. This can only be submerged by working from home if necessary to reduce the traffic impact. 

Besides, there is a reduction in energy consumption. The office environment typically consumes mere energy in comparison to subsequent workers working from home. When accounting for office consumption you involve large printing stations and computers operating constantly on standby mode. Another reason is that people in an office atmosphere tend to act less conscious environmentally (Golden & Eddleston (2020)). One would try to compare the energy used in offices to that used in heating or cooling. Considering that they use a significant amount of energy, people tend to utilize natural means like opening windows for fresh air rather than air conditioning. Research shows that energy consumed in offices is twice that which would be consumed while telecommuting. Lastly, there is a stimulated development of small towns. The majority of the population lives in major cities due to a high probability of better career opportunities. This leads to overpopulation in major cities to try to cut down on commuting time thus raising the cost of leaving and poor environmental interactions. Many people usually do not even like the high city cost of living. If this population is given the chance to telecommute, they would go for the more sustainable and affordable suburban and rural lifestyles. This would improve the major city environment and air quality by minimal overpopulation leading to resource diversification and improving the lifestyle of other minor towns and rural areas. This effect allows for cities’ environment to be improved by reducing nature destruction to build skyscrapers and giving space for greener cities.     

What are the impacts of telecommuting on work environments? 

Telecommuting has the most positive consequent positive results for the work environment. Having flexible work provisions offers employees more control over their surroundings which improves performance and total job satisfaction. Research shows that telecommuters have reported more job satisfaction with low motives to leave the organization, offering less stress, improving work-family balance, and improved supervisory performance rating. To start with, there is improved general work productivity. Workers find it difficult to work in a traditional work environment due to several distractions like the water cooler gossip personal issues and work-related issues. Employees’ feedback majors on more overall productivity while telecommuting sin minimal distractions are divining for increased efficiency. Telecommuting allows workers to maximize their daily time retention and adjust their personal physical and mental devotion needed to optimize productivity. Removing the few minutes used to commute to the working place can change the world. In situations of illness, one can easily heal from their home while still working but minimizing the office inflicted pressure thus managing one personal condition while still working on productivity. 

Secondly, telecommuting keeps the older generation in the labor mark labor aging population usually has minimal energy for the daily commute to and from the workplace thus leaving them out of the job market but they have great professionalism. Telecommuting offers them an opportunity to practice their expertise in society. It also gives them the chance for more frequent health checkups without it interfering with their work schedule. Moreover, telecommuting reduces operational costs. The cost used to commute the workers to and from the pickup points using an organizational transport system is cut off. The companies usually receive more billing in presence of workers due to extra resource utilization with minimum regulation. These costs are cut off in the situation of telecommuting giving the organization to improve its profit margins. Moreover, there is a reduction in employee turnover. Telecommuters are usually more willing to work overtime with high levels of loyalty to their respective companies while working remotely. Also, telecommuting provides for better and healthy work and life balance reducing the turnover rates which are not the same as the traditional working environment. Telecommuting provides a better work future. It has become a new way of life to adopt the new working techniques in replacement of the traditional workplace environment. This is because of the widespread acceptance of this practice and increased employee happiness and productivity. 

Telecommuting also has some negative impacts on the working environment irrespective of telecommuters’ happiness. First, there is minimal client contact. Telecommuting reduces the in-person interactions with the clients which might be a big deal to some companies making the client feel neglected. To solve the challenge, more technological solutions that promote internet collaboration and regular review should be implemented. Maximized utilization of screen sharing and video conferencing programs should be encouraged to enhance client interactions and real-time project reviews. Second, there is the challenge of a non-telecommuting workload. Employees left-back in the office environment usually suffer increased stress when a portion of workers moves out. The worker can feel left out and limited from some benefits like lithe hours and working from a more comfortable location. After an instant change in organizational communication procedures, the office workers tend to feel the increased clients burden overwhelming them. To balance on this the telecommuters should provide more autonomy to the staff while still having some in-office hours.

Furthermore, there is minimal teamwork among the company employees. This weakens the team in client project completion. Employees beginning telecommuting also find it difficult in working alone since they were used to working together thus reducing their work efficiency before finding new ways for work presentations. Consequently, there may be a productivity dip before the team learns to work in the new framework or environment. Strategic implementations are required such as frequent calls, web meetings, and instant messaging to ease the informal communication thus facilitating team atmosphere maintenance. Finally, telecommuting leads to minimal staff relationships and interactions. This is usually caused by online and by phone communication with their colleagues, which can lead to overall productivity and job satisfaction sabotage. Telecommuting can weaken the overall job atmosphere because relationships cause effective collaboration and trust. Though enhancing the connection, staff should consider frequent social events, meetings, or retreats and consider in-person attendance. 

In conclusion, viewing from the diverse perspective of telecommuting, the pros of this practice prove to be stronger comparee to the. As indicated, each challenge is accompanied by a possible solution showing that it is of importance to practice telecommuting in the work environment. Companies could discover that telecommuting usage can be essential to acquiring low-cost labor unavailable in their local pool. A rising number of businesses are practicing telecommuting in this era of domestic and foreign outsourcing. In consideration of the global environment, gas prices rise, and diminishing employee morale telecommuting is taking roots in the custom job environment. The effects of telecommuting become difficult to predict due to the dependency on the extent to which it becomes popular but offers a vast global acceptance. However, it feels that telecommuting is the beginning of a societal major shift, with a huge possibility compared to a big industrial revolution creating our present work ideas.  

    References

O'Brien, W., & Aliabadi, F. Y. (2020). Does telecommuting save energy? A critical review of quantitative studies and their research methods. Energy and Buildings, 225, 110298. 

Barbuto, A., Gilliland, A., Peebles, R., Rossi, N., & Shrout, T. (2020). Telecommuting: smarter workplaces. 

Golden, T. D., & Eddleston, K. A. (2020). Is there a price telecommuter pay? Examining the relationship between telecommuting and objective career success. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 116, 103348.