Telecommuting: A New Idea That Looks Better Than It Is?
Telecommuting is a major buzzword in the new Age of Information, and for anyone who drives to work on L.A. freeways, the idea has to be seductive. The concept promises, among other things, liberation from exhaust fumes, parking problems and bumper-to-bumper traffic.
For some people, that liberation is already at hand. Telecommuting, considered only a futuristic vision in the 1970s, has taken off in the late 1980s. The number of people working at home computers linked to their offices by phone lines is a growing phenomenon (the total recently passed 2 million) and, at first glance, a welcome one.
Recently, the concept has become a trendy topic for business and consumer magazines. Articles with headlines such as “Telecommuters Say There’s No Workplace Like Home,” “Home Is Where the Work Is” and “It’s Rush Hour for Telecommuting” cite savings of commuting time, lowered stress, an expanded labor pool, increased productivity and reduced personnel costs as among the mutual benefits that can occur when people work from home.
Taking a Harder Look
But while conceding that these are all legitimate points, one USC management expert is taking a harder look at the concept. She maintains that the prevailing view of teleworking as a panacea is naive.
“Teleworking has been seen as a wonderful possibility, almost as an illusion for too long,” contended Mary Ann Von Glinow, an associate professor of management and organization at the USC Graduate School of Business. “It has been painted as an ideal picture for everyone.”
Quite the contrary, she feels, the luxury of staying at home rather than driving to an office, despite its attractions, could extract serious trade-offs down the line, particularly for women and members of minority groups.
She and USC colleague Robert O. Metzger have been studying the new field, combing the literature and interviewing colleagues working in the industry. Their findings, first reported in the current issue of California Management Review, raise some warning flags.
Von Glinow, a specialist in high-tech employment, acknowledged the oft-sung benefits.
For employers, they include recruiting from an enlarged pool of talent, greater use of part-time workers, fewer demands for office space and parking facilities and the easing of pressures for such benefits as day-care.
For employees, the advantages include freedom from commuting and dress codes, working at your own pace without a boss hanging over your head and working on a number of projects at one time, even for more than one employer. “If you are handicapped, it’s a good way to go to work,” Von Glinow said in an interview. “You just sit at your computer.”
And studies show a lot of work-related stress is reduced for everyone.
So what could possibly be wrong with this scenario? For one thing, these “Brave New World” relationships might not be as ideal as they seem, Von Glinow suggests. She and Metzger note several paradoxes that telecommuters and their employers might not anticipate.
One is the “networking paradox.” Even while the telecommuter is enjoying a new sense of independence, he or she is becoming increasingly isolated.
“There are a lot of reasons, in addition to money, why people work,” Von Glinow said. “Some are social reasons, some are psychological. People need to affiliate with others, and that’s a real, vital function of organizations that they don’t always think through.”
Another is the “day care paradox.” Faced with increasing pressure to provide day-care facilities, some employers are offering mothers the option of working at home. The paradox is that working and tending to children provides such tension, Von Glinow says, “that workers cannot handle these conflicting responsibilities for long and they tend to leave the company.”
Another potential pitfall, the “career paradox,” could be a major issue to women and minorities, just at a time when they are making progress toward inclusion in the corporate hierarchy. Says Von Glinow, who also teaches a course in women in management: “Part of the way people get promoted in an organization is in visibility, and when you are off-site, you are not visible. So you take yourself out of a huge game.
“Whether by design or default, the adoption of telecommuting has the rather interesting effect of excluding a lot of people from the social and political actions of the firm.” Von Glinow, who has a Ph.D. from Ohio State University in management science, has specialized on the management of high-tech employees and has two books coming out shortly on the skills needed for this new field.
Unanticipated Issues
“Our study suggests that we need to be a little cautious before we jump into telecommuting hook, line and sinker,” Von Glinow said. “There are some unanticipated issues. While the benefits are obvious, some significant problems can pop up.”
Taking a cool look right now is important, she says, because the growth projections are “amazingly large.”
With about 2.3 million households now involved in some sort of work at home, forecasts for the year 2000 are that 20% of America’s 100 million commuting workers will work from home.
This predicted growth is based on the fact that service industries such as life insurance, airlines and banks devote a substantial share of their operations simply to the transfer and manipulation of information. And that can be done almost as easily at a home terminal as in a centralized office.
She is not opposed to telecommuting, she says. “I sit here at home, particularly in the summertime, and write books on my computer terminal. I go in physically to the office for teaching, but a lot of my work is done at home.” It is simply her concern that telecommuting be taken seriously in all its aspects.
“Right now, we are applying a different lens to this whole issue, and it’s something of a warning,” she said. “Many companies are engaged in this, but before everyone joins the rush, we are saying it should be analyzed from all angles.”
