Travails and treasures of telecommuting

Travelling to a workplace is not the most pleasant experience, in the current Sri Lankan scenario. When the number of vehicles on the rise and the roads remain same, the obvious realty is increasing congestion. Can we work from home without going to an office? A rising global trend offers interesting insights on this.

 

Meaning of telecommuting

Telecommuting or telework is considered as working outside the conventional workplace and communicating with it by way of telecommunications or computer-based technology. It constitutes an early form of “virtual” work, which has inspired research disciplines ranging from transportation and urban planning to ethics, law, sociology and organisational studies (Bailey and others, 2002).

Amongst several forms of “work-at-home”, I would use the term “telecommuting” to refer to work carried out at home during regular office hours by employees of organisations.

Global scene

Many employees around the world have replaced their commute to work with electronic links to their workplace. Telecommuting to work is trending upward. A recent survey in PC World magazine indicates that approximately 23% of all employees regularly do their work from some place other than the office.

Although this is an innovative way to complete work, there are significant risks experienced by both the organisation and the employee who is engaged in telecommuting. When a telecommuting experience is unsuccessful there may be a tendency to conclude that the situation was not conducive to telecommuting.

This type of conclusion would tell only a part of the story. An important issue pertains to the suitability of an individual for a telecommuting experience. Thus, it is the confluence of a number of individual and organisational issues that will contribute to the suitability of the telecommuting experience for both individual and organisation.

According to citeman.com website, working from home or telecommuting had gained rapid ground in Bangalore’s software industry. IBM allows employees (project upwards) to work from home. At Accenture all employees in functional areas like human resources (HR), finance, marketing and information technology (IT) can telecommute.

Prudential ICICI has done away with the office convention of a nine to six routine and allows its sales department employees to come in at 11 a.m. and to leave at 8 p.m. At Marico, there is no concept of a fixed number of days of casual leave as long as the job is done. HSBC India has implemented flexi-time policy from February 2008. Other Indian companies that have opted for flex time include Lion Bridge India, YBrant Technologies and KPIT Cummins.

Critical success factors for telecommuting

A clear look at an institution and its individuals will provide a gross yardstick for considering the potential for the implementation of telecommuting. Two most important factors can be identified, in this context. They are: the institutional and individual capacity (OIC) for telecommuting, and the amenability of the work (WA) to telecommuting.

Amenability is usually referred to as the flexible nature of work which allows it to be handled by employees in optional ways. Based on the ongoing research work by Professor Michel Buckley of University of Oklahoma and myself, few scenarios can be proposed. Figure 1 shows us four such different scenarios that can occur in this context.

If the OIC and the WA are both high, then the situation appears to be a good fit for telecommuting. In a situation where OIC is high and WA is low there appears to be a situation in which there is a poor level of fit between the workforce and the work.

If OIC is low but the WA is high, telecommuting may be possible if an organisation makes an attempt to upgrade both technology and the level of personnel employed by the organisation. If WA and OIC are both low, then it can be concluded that telecommuting is a poor fit in this situation. It must be stated that this is an initial evaluation. There are myriad other factors which influence this decision.

Industry scenarios

Based on the typology described above, several industry scenarios can be considered. Let’s look at a typical western situation first, and then reflect on Sri Lanka. .

Scenario 1: Telecommuting Misfit (OIC –low, WA – low): Mary is front office assistant of a bank in the USA, and her work involves direct contact with customers. She explored the possibility of working from home, but was not an option due to the nature of her work.

This is the case with regard to most banks in Sri Lanka, where physical presence of employees on a daily basis is the norm. It can be extended too many other industries as well.

Scenario 2: Work Constraints (OIC – high, WA – low): Peter is a creative writer in an advertising firm in France. His company is flexible in allowing him to work from home. However, he has to visit clients and need to attend regular meetings in others’ offices. Hence, there is a challenge for him to fully resort to telecommuting.

A similar case may prevail with many advertising firms in Sri Lanka. Also, a variety of jobs in the ICT industry also may witness such situations.

Scenario 3: Capacity Constraints (OIC – low, WA – high): Alex is an entrepreneurial CEO of a trading organisation in the UK. He has a dozen of marketing executives who used to work in a large office. With the dismal performance of last year, he is under pressure from the board of directors for more stringent cost control. However, he has financial issues in dealing with infrastructure requirements such as computer availability with internet connectivity for his employees. Thus, even though the team is very much willing, the support for telecommuting does not exist here.

This is also not very uncommon in Sri Lanka, with its increasing IT literacy rate. Shortcomings in the necessary infrastructure can hinder the cost-effective utilisation of available talent.

Scenario 4: Telecommuting Fit (OIC – high, WA – high): Joel is a systems analyst and enjoys working late night in Germany. He need not got to office, thanks to the flexible arrangement offered by his firm. With the internet connectivity, he shares his programs with the office and is in touch. He has access to company servers located in different locations and there is no need to be physically present at meetings in the office. He uses web2 tools to be in touch with his clients and colleagues. This position is very much amenable to telecommuting.

We can find a variety of such opportunities in Sri Lanka. The ICT industry can be stated as the forerunner in this approach. With an able set of software developers and having projects that have components that can be handled in a flexible manner, telecommuting becomes possible. Yet, the effectiveness of such a practice relies on several job and family related factors.

Employee responses to telecommuting

As much as the organisation may task an employee, the decision is left to the employee in their definition of the difference between work and home. Genova (2010) opines that the more situational freedom employees enjoy, the more liability follows their natural proclivity to blend business and personal activities.

Employers and employees will have to work together to determine guidelines for work hours and circumstances an employee can be called during non-work hours. The employee may be expected to display an increase of performance with the increased responsibility and independence.

Essentially, the employee and the employer must exhibit trust and responsibility toward one other in telecommuting situations. Although they both have increased responsibility and communication requirements, the employer is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the telecommuting employee.

The employer has to provide the same standards of an office environment to an employee’s at home workstation. Although the employee has increased autonomy, company leadership must provide appropriate measures in order to maintain employee efficiency and keep employees contributing at a productive rate towards the company.

Relevance to Sri Lanka

Based on the above discussion, there is an opportunity for Sri Lankan organisations to explore the prospects of telecommuting. As the typology clearly showed us, it is not the panacea for all corporate illnesses. Careful selection of specific tasks that can be handled through telecommuting, as well as ensuring the availability of necessary infrastructure, are critical steps in this direction. Comprehensive studies with respect to Sri Lankan industries need to be done to explore further opportunities.

As the way the rest of the world is benefiting from the practice of telecommuting, Sri Lanka can also utilise its strengths, in the process of its ongoing economic expansion.





(Dr. Ajantha Dharmasiri is a learner, teacher, trainer, researcher, writer and a thinker in the areas of Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour. He can be reached on [email protected].)