ADVANTAGES OF KEEPING THE TELECOMMUTING PROGRAM
1. Reduced expenses for both employees and the company
Telecommuting can help cut down on transportation and other minor costs for IBM’s employees as well as lead to a lower overhead for the company. According to a report done by Global Workplace Analytics "A typical business would save $11,000 per person per year [while] the telecommuters would save between $2,000 and $7,000 a year” (2017). Unfortunately, many employees do not have the luxury of living close to their place of work. According to a recent census, “It now takes the average worker 26 minutes to travel to work [while] roughly a quarter of American commutes are less than 15 minutes one way [and] nearly 17 percent of commutes are
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[Which] adds up to 60 hours of dawdling a month, or a total of 759 hours each year” (Huth, 2015). Some of the main distractions being talkative coworkers, surfing the web, and mobile phones. Many of these distractions seen in figure 1 can be almost completely eliminated, leading to a more productive workflow for telecommuters. Those distractions being a noisy office, bad office technology, and pointless meetings.
Figure 1 (Huth, 2015)
DISADVANTAGES OF KEEPING THE TELECOMMUTING PROGRAM
1. Lack of collaboration can lead to less creativity
Teamwork and collaboration are essential parts of the creative process. Although it is not impossible to work in creative teams from home, telecommuting comes with certain communication roadblocks, making it harder to come up with viable, out-of-the-box ideas. As stated by Joonas Virtanen “According the study, far the biggest hurdles for creative remote work were the following: Communication suffers significantly, spontaneity is often lost, and lack of interpersonal relationships makes the work less stimulating” (2015). The study also showed that from the pool of workers surveyed, “only 15% think having remote team members increases the quality of work [and] 46% felt the quality of the creative work suffered due to working remotely” (Virtanen, 2015). Face-to-face communication has proven to be more effective than telecommuting when
Telecommuting has been shown to reduce absenteeism, improve retention, and reduce recruitment costs for the organization (Family, pg. 730). Increased employee moral is also a benefit associated with telecommuting (Professional Isolation, pg. 512). Offering this new benefit that is such a satisfier for employees will likely result in reduced turnover within the organization and higher productivity. A study found pubic employees who were satisfied with their telework/telecommuting benefits were less likely to leave their positions (Family pg. 732). With the reduction of office time, an increase in employee productivity is likely due to fewer interruptions from fellow employees (Lessons pg. 10). With telecommuting having benefits to both the employer and employee, this new policy should bring positive results to the
Employers allow telecommuting for many reasons, including the ability to recruit better talent, decrease overhead expenses, increase productivity, expand the employee base to include those with disabilities (Anderson, Bricout & West, 2001; Lipin, 2010; Myungjung & So Hee, 2017), and to support
“This remote work may be something we should be doing more of, according to two new studies. Working from home can be good for your health and productivity. Not only did people who worked from home report greater work satisfaction and less “work exhaustion,” they also got better sleep. Separately, researchers found that the highest performing workers were the most likely to cultivate and excel in a “WFH” environment (Gregoire, 2015)”. If workers don't prefer to work at home they are more than welcome to continue working at the main workplace. The company will give each employee the opportunity to try working from home in order to have more space at the main work
According to Hess (2014), employers’ benefit from the cost saving from not maintaining large office buildings to house their employees and the employees benefit from saving money on travel, meals, and in some instances child care. Hess (2014) goes further and says that distractions usually found in a typical office environment (i.e. phone calls, office conversations, and the like) promotes more efficient work. Although there are inherent positives for the employer, there are also inherent negatives that a manager must face in order to promote a good work environment for the company and for the remote employee. Fallon (2014) gives four challenges that a manager faces managing remote employees. The challenges of Communication, Tracking Productivity, Employee Trust, and providing a Unified Company Culture are the four main issues that Fallon
Justification The Bay Area is a traffic nightmare. The option to take public transportation, the CalTrain, for example, is a huge benefit and saves time and money. Telecommuting is also a great way to avoid the hassles of traffic and provide a flexible work schedule. Autonomy goes hand in hand with Telecommuting, with allowing people to have a flexible schedule. Also, it fosters a feeling of trust and encourages productivity and creativity.
Such a distraction prevents them from getting their work done, which demonstrates the futility of Richtel’s point about efficiency. Although they may be able to find information quickly, if they are distracted by their phones, people are simply wasting
Today’s fuel costs have put a great deal of pressure on the commuting employee and they are looking for ways to cut corners. An alternative for work commute trips is telecommuting. It is obvious that there is a tangible savings by the employee if they are able to work from their home. The employer is concerned and rightfully so that managing resources through telecommuting is more difficult than managing traditionally.
A revolution is spreading through the world of work because of changes in information, technology and communication. Information and technology has lessened the gaps between individuals and it is no longer necessary for people to be in close geographic location to enhance working capabilities. Telework means working at a distance and technology makes this possible. Teleworkers are defined as employees or contractors who work at least one day per month; they are also referred to as telecommuters. Research shows that teleworkers work nine days per month at home with three hours per week during normal business hours. Teleworkers seek to blend work responsibilities and personal benefits to enable them handle their work better and life responsibilities.
MedEx has reported having a high employee turnover rate and based on the employee survey, there are a lot of employees that are not happy with their work commute, lack of parking downtown, and the challenge of balancing their personal life with their work responsibilities. Telecommuting is a great way for the employer to address all these employee concerns. The incentive of telecommuting would eliminate the commute time and parking associated with the commute, allow an employee a comfortable work setting, and offer a more flexible schedule allowing for employees to deal with personal issues when needed (Young, 1991). As you can see, telecommuting would benefit MedEx since it would improve the employee- employer relationship by promoting employee
Many Interns are working full time at ISEC, performing the same duties as other non-Intern employees. Because of that, Recent Graduate Interns qualify for full benefits. Interns deal with the same day to day life issues as anyone else. For example, a contagious illness or an injury which, although preventing an in-office work day, does not necessitate work stoppage, if working from home is an option. Under normal circumstances an Intern would need to take leave, and miss work. They would have to pass off their work to somebody else, who likely knows less about the project subject matter. If he/she could telework the Intern could support their current mission and continue to work and stay in contact with their management team. Many employees enjoy health and fitness. If an intern had the ability to telework he/she could go on a run, lift weights, or do yoga and not need the extra time to drive to a gym, and shower if they are already home. Interns that have commutes of an hour or more can shave two hours off their time and dedicate that to their training and their projects. Within the Intern population at ISEC FDED, the benefit of teleworking would easily increase moral in the work force and increase our retain rate of new employees, with no cost to the organization. Productivity has been shown to increase, with the increased work-life
Harry Davis, who is the Human Resource Manager (HRM), is determined to discover what is causing the high turnover rate with the medical billing specialists at MedEx. According to the text, telecommuting is an example of an unconventional work arrangement where employees work from home or another location besides their traditional employer (Martocchio, 2013). Nevertheless, Harry conducts a survey, which reflects, that a vast majority of the employees would prefer to work from home. The possibility of telecommuting being offered at MedEx, for the medical billing specialist, has finally become a reality. However, telecommuting has its disadvantages and challenges.
The benefits of teleworking are largely self-evident. Management saves money by not having to invest in real estate costs (Ruth, 2008). By working in private (typically from one's home), employees are for the most part able to regulate their hours. People have different 'body clocks' and teleworking allows a worker to tailor their work schedule to the period of the day in which they work best. Pigeonholing someone who works best at night to a '9 to 5' schedule does not maximize a worker's productivity, and teleworking ensures that management receives the worker's most productive hours.
In any remote working setup, employees and supervisors have to work harder to maintain cordial relationships with co-workers. As the remote staff works away from the business zone, there will be less awareness of happenings and updates within the company. It may lead to communication gap between employers and the remote team.
In this day and age, many companies are allowing people to work from home to expand their business. The people that mange these workers face many challenges. This paper addresses some of the issues and discusses ways to keep remote workers engaged.
Constantly using phones while at work decreases productivity drastically. Checking a phone for one or two minutes at a time, several times a day can amount to hours of precious work time being lost, thus decreasing productivity. According to an online article, “1 in 5 employers think that employees are productive fewer than 5 hours a day” in that same article, the author also stated “… 55% of employers say texting/cellphones is the biggest source of distractions” (Farber). This comes to shows that there is a growing problem of lack of productivity in the work force due to the constant use of cell phones. In a different article, the text stated, “ 3 quarters of employers say that two or more hours a day are lost in productivity because of distractions such as texting, the internet, social media, and email…” (Mirabella). Phones have just become a