TELECOMMUTING

Home-based Telecommuters: Whether to use remote workers?

Home-based Telecommuters: Whether to use remote workers?

Introduction

Telecommuting represents working outside the conventional workplace. Nowadays this has turned out to be a standardized work agreement for 15 percent of every commercial workers in Canada and United States (U.S) and, about 9 percent in European Union (EU)nations. In recent years, a large body of research has appeared concerning the societal, organizational, and individual drivers and results of telecommuting, until now comparatively modest research has looked at telecommuter productivity, retention and cost reduction tool for the organization. This paper analyses the Telecommuting as a viable option for companies because remote workers are more productive than those in a traditional office setting, businesses see improved retention and overall costs to the company are reduced. Companies should switch over to telecommuters.

The growing power, sophistication and probability of technology have made remote work a viable option in meeting the demands for flexible work options. Information technology has contributed to making work less geographically dependent (Westfall, 2003). Telecommuting originated with the idea that work could be moved to where the workers are, rather than moving the workers to the work. People can work in variety of locations (e.g. home, neighborhood office, at client location etc.) and participate in the work of organization.

Telecommuting has grown due to the demand of three constituencies: employees, organization and society. First, employee demands for more flexible work arrangement resulted from substantial changes to the family structure. Secondly, organization, because of demographic changes, need to make accommodations to attract and retain employees (Westfall, 2003). The coming generation of employees would be greatly slighter than the present working force as grown-up employee, who have know-how and are trained, give up work the slighter group of younger employee reasons a scarcity of required workers. Flexible working choices are imagined to be needed to hire and keep hold of first-class workers. The Cost lessening and output improvement could also drive businesses assume telecommuting programmes.

Finally, societal demands for environmental awareness are the third factor contributing to the demand for flexible work (Westfall, 2003).

Improved retention

Telecommuting is mostly associated with improvement in working conditions that can lead for career success. Smart Valley Telecommuting Guide (www.smarttone.svi.org) indicated that telecommuting as a flexible workplace option reduces absenteeism and employee turnover. Other popular press and web sites mentioned that telecommuting makes it possible to retain workers and increase workers satisfaction and loyalty. Further, a recent survey of fortune 500 executives reported that 63 percent of executives indicated that telecommuting improved employees, retention, 63 percent reported reduced employee stress, and 79 percent reported improved employee morale (Ditlea, 1995)

Company policies on telecommuting are frequently based on the premises that telecommuting arrangements will increase job satisfaction and organizational commitment and eventually reduce turnover. It is widely believed that telecommuting will increase the level of job satisfaction among telecommuter (ref). It has been reported that managers and practitioners believe, for a variety of reasons, telecommuting contributes to increase levels of job ...