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FAQ: What are the benefits of Telework - Telecommuting?
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Page updated:25 January 2000
Telework (Telecommuting):
the Benefits - and some Issues!
Our sponsors make it possible to provide and maintain these FAQs pages:
Teleworking offers significant benefits to employers, employees, self
employed individuals and entrepreneurs, and in developing the local economy. It also presents opportunities to secure wider social benefits - for example by reducing the environmental impact of car travel.
Management Technology Associates has conducted several studies to obtain and analyse the views of experienced teleworkers and of managers who have experience in working with teleworkers. The following summary of the benefits includes only those aspects where a majority of experienced teleworkers and managers concur that a worthwhile benefit has been obtained.
Note that benefits only accrue from successful telework
programmes, and that some companies have attempted telework programmes
but subsequently reverted to office based working having had a negative
experience. Some aspects of telework that must be considered in order to
achieve success and minimise problems are discussed below under
"Are there drawbacks?".
Benefits for employers
Benefits for individuals
Social and economic benefits
Are there drawbacks?
Benefits for employers
Cost savings
The main savings are in premises costs, office overheads and labour.
Companies adopting telework methods achieve significant reductions in
total office occupancy. Work can be carried out wherever the appropriate skills are available at the optimum mix of costs and other factors. In some circumstances recruitment costs can also be reduced, as can the costs associated with high staff turnover (attrition) rates. If a company adopts a total "flexible working" strategy, all costs associated with relocation of staff can be eliminated.
Increased productivity
Productivity increases of 40% have been reported, though a range of
10%-40% is probably more typical across a large-scale programme.
Teleworkers avoid travel time and the interruptions of a office environment. Both teleworkers and their managers consistently report significant productivity gains.
Improved motivation
In successful programmes, employees respond well to the signal of
trust and confidence indicated by the employer's adoption of more independent work styles encouraged by teleworking.
Skills retention
Employees who might otherwise leave can remain in their jobs,
for example when the family moves because of a job change by
another family member who works in a non-telework company. Employees
who take a career break can continue working part time and remain
up to date with the business and its methods. Employees who take
maternity leave can continue to undertake some tasks and require less
retraining when they return to work full time.
Organisation flexibility
In the event of restructuring and reorganisation people can continue to
work without disruption to their personal lives. People work in dispersed
teams that can be assembled and reassembled as the needs of the
enterprise change. Teams representing the best skills and experience for
a particular project can be created, regardless of geography and time zones
and with a minimal need for extra travel.
Flexible staffing
In activities that generate peaks and troughs of workload, telework can
enable staff to work limited hours to match peak workload, without the staff
concerned having to travel. In limited hours working the travel element can
otherwise become as long as the work time. In some cases staff can be on
"standby time" at home at retainer rates and then paid at higher rates when
needed for active work.
Resilience
Organisations with effective teleworking programmes are more resilient in the face of external disruption - for example transport strikes, severe weather, natural disasters or terrorist action.
Enhanced customer service
Customer services can be extended beyond the working day or the
working week without the costs of overtime payments or the need for staff
to work (and travel) at unsocial hours.
Return to page Contents List
Benefits for individuals
Reduced travel time and costs
This is the most obvious benefit and, for many teleworkers, a primary
motivation. In our surveys, most teleworkers have used at least part
of this time to get more work done, in contrast to the "relaxed lifestyle"
image painted by the media.
Improved work opportunities
Work opportunities are not confined to jobs within reasonable
commuting distance.
Less disruption to family life
An effective telework and flexible working programme reduces the
need for relocation to take up "career moves" and other job changes.
Better balance of work and family life
Even though the teleworker may put in more hours of effective
work, he or she can still expect to see more of the family and can more
easily participate in home responsibilities such as ferrying children, shopping
etc.
Participation in the local community
An important benefit for many rurally based teleworkers is being "on
the spot" to participate in community activities - for example as a school
governor or in local clubs and societies, at a time when commuters are
still en route.
Flexible hours
A flexible approach to working hours often accompanies the successful
teleworking programme. Each individual has a personal daily "rythm" - some are at their most lively and creative in the early morning, some late at night. Typical commuting patterns and office hours condemn everyone to work roughly the same timetable, while a flexible telework approach can mean individual freedom to stop and start according to what works best.
(Note however that there are cases where the task requires the teleworker to be available at specific hours, for example in customer service activities.)
Return to page Contents List
Social and economic benefits
Reduced traffic congestion
In the most intensive commuter areas its quite noticeable how
much more easily the traffic flows when even ten percent of commuters
are away on holiday. Our study of
transport-telecommunications
substitution for the UK Department of Transport confirmed that
even on days when teleworkers commute, they tend to choose off
peak times.
Reduced total travel and consequent pollution
The same
transport-telecommunications
substitution study also confirmed that teleworkers do generate a worthwhile net reduction in total car travel. In California and some other states, there are legal or fiscal programmes aimed at encouraging telework as part of a battery of anti-pollution measures.
Wider employment/work opportunities
Potentially, telework can enable people in an area of high unemployment
to have access to work opportunities that arise anywhere world wide.
To take advantage of this, either the
individual must have skills that are in high demand and plus well developed
personal skills
in electronic networking that will bring their competence to the attention of appropriate employers, or the local
community must take steps to establish itself with a high profile on the networks so that "distance working" opportunities are generated for local people.
Individual skills are addressed by MTA's
Personal Skills programme. The mechanisms for establishing a strong "presence" for local communities are addressed in MTA's published (on paper!) report
Telework and Teletrade: The Local and Regional Response and can also be supported through part of our Enterprise Online programme.
Access to work for people with specific difficulties
Telework can also enable access to work, training and social interaction
for people who have specific problems - for example those with disabilities that make it difficult to travel to work or to do a normal nine-to-five working day; single parents who need to be at home for the children; carers with responsibility for an elderly or sick relative. Again, special measures may be needed to make such access realisable. MTA supports the
AccessNet Campaign, which seeks to ensure equality of access (or better!) to the networked economy for people with disabilities.
Economic regeneration
Telework and teletrade are central to future opportunities for trade and work and should now be an important element of any economic regeneration programme. This is addressed by MTA's published report Telework and Teletrade: The Local and
Regional Response,.
Return to page Contents List
Are there drawbacks?
As with any new technology or technique, telework only yields benefits when
applied in the right circumstances and in the right way. We are developing a
"Frequently Asked Questions"* section for this web site that will list and address all the issues that need to be considered in order to run a
successful telework programme, whether as an individual, as an enterprise, or in support of a local community or region. Meanwhile, the main aspects that have to be right in order for telework to yield benefits rather than problems are:
The person
Home based telework is inappropriate for some people - for example
those who have poor personal motivation and are not "self starters" may need
the external discipline provided by set hours and a managed environment. There's also a case to suggest that young people entering work for the first time may benefit greatly from working in a conventional team setting in their early years. For some people, "going to work" is an important part of their lives, and the "place of work" is where they make friends and develop their social skills and contacts. A "telecentres" approach may address some but not all of these issues.
The place
Many homes are not well equipped for some kinds of telework. For
example even the most highly motivated individual could have problems focusing on and completing a series of concentrative tasks in a small apartment with children underfoot and noisy neighbours on the other side of a flimsy wall. A "telecentres" programme would be more appropriate in this case.
The employer organisation
Some companies have management systems and cultures that are not (yet)
well adapted to the flexibility that telework can entail. Our survey of UK managers' opinions showed that there are many manager who lack confidence in their ability to "manage at a distance", and also those who lack faith in their staff's commitment and so feel that home based workers would be inclined to underperform.
The work task
Not all tasks are best performed in a distributed, self managing environment. There are many tasks that gain considerably from the very close interactions of a team working together in one room, or from the synergy of closely supervised teams. Examples include some kinds of design or other creative work, where the very casual "rub off" of the studio or research setting is an important part of the creative process. In some customer service or sales activities there's an advantage to the kind of team spirit and internal motivation that can best be generated by leaders and managers sitting in with the teams and "leading from the front". Some of our colleagues also feel that a high proportion of clerical work may best be undertaken in a closely managed setting.
None of these considerations is necessarily a barrier to telework, they just illustrate how things can go wrong if a telework programme isn't well thought through. If we do get someone teleworking in the wrong setting doing a task that's inappropriate, we must expect problems. Too often, the result is a judgement that "telework doesn't work" or "telework doesn't work for us". The truth is, "we made a mess of adopting telework"!
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