What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Telecommuting

INTRODUCTION

Telecommuting is seen to be becoming more and more prevalent in today’s workforce. As companies become open to the idea of telecommuting, it has become possible to expand on the number of employees for which telecommuting may be necessary and more practical in terms of working from home, satellite offices, neighbourhood work centres and those who work portably and are not designated to one location. Telecommuting has been seen to have many advantages. Such advantages that have been noted is not having as many distractions, taking out the need to travel for those who are unable to, and also expanding the labor pool in a day and age where employee prospects are shrinking. Although there are noted disadvantages such as employees possibly

A major problem when telecommuting is potentially becoming ‘disenfranchised’ from the organisation and not being able to form a partnership with other employees (Ford and McLaughlin 1995). For example, if a telecommuter was to come into the organisation’s workplace and interaction with employees was involved, those that work at said organisation would already be acquainted, thus potentially leading to feeling marginalised.

In the matter of disadvantages for companies when it comes to telecommuting, not being able to supervise those that work from home can be difficult. Due to companies often having multiple telecommuters, establishments are forced to reduce the span of supervision on home employees and thus cannot accommodate problems faced by every single teleworker. Not being able to supervise also leads to businesses not being able to measure the progress of those who telecommute. If those that are working at home are putting in extra hours and effort, it may not be necessarily tracked, therefore possibly missing out on rewards and praise. It is the job of a Human Resource Manager to ensure that these disadvantages are managed and that they adapt to the telecommuting style of