Study Confirms Benefits of Telecommuting
The Vancouver Sun reports on a recent study that confirms what teleworkers have experienced and what employers are beginning to recognize and acknowledge.
Working from home, or “telecommuting,” is becoming more commonplace and popular among workers as technological advancements allow for it.
But is everyone a fan?
The conventional wisdom is that allowing people to work from home can hurt business. Telecommuters may be less productive, more inclined to quit and perform less well than workers at the office. Employers may be concerned that at-home workers are more easily distracted by family and social obligations and opportunities, perhaps doing less in a day and negatively affecting business results.
Critics also maintain that letting employees work from home should be avoided since it damages staff chances for promotion, undermines supervisor-subordinate relationships and increases family conflict. When staff aren’t in the office, they appear to be less loyal and committed as a result. This damages their reputations as promotion-ready and they are sidelined.
Relationships with supervisors are supposed to suffer under these arrangements as well. Managers rely on observing staff to evaluate their performance. When the manager can’t see what staff are doing, distrust could develop, causing supervisors to monitor employees more closely. They may implicitly suspect that the worker is not pulling his or her weight by hiding out at home.
Families could suffer more under telecommuting arrangements since technology reduces boundaries between work and family. People find their loved one constantly working and unavailable, see no downtime for the telecommuter and as a result conflict increases.
Right?
Not according to a recent study in The Journal of Applied Psychology, which firmly debunks these claims. Ravi Gajendran and David Harrison at the Department of Management and Organization with Pennsylvania State University, conducted an extensive review of 46 studies on the subject featuring 12,883 employees. Their results show that working from home is good for business and for staff.
The article continues, itemizing the key advantages of telecommuting.
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