Telecommuting And Company XYZ Report Sample

Telecommuting trends

Telecommuting is a term used when people take advantage of the available technological advances to work from any location of their choice, giving themselves flexibility in work locations and their hours. It is also known as e-work or e-commuting. It is therefore very critical to note that employers should approve telecommuting whereas opinions differ in the topic of telecommuting. Many organizations do not allow its workers to work at home instead of their physical office. It seems that telecommuting is mainly driven by management attitude changes, improvement in technology, demands from the staff and savings in office costs. Since saving costs is very important in every organization, the decision to use telecommuting depends on the demand from management and staff. According to research done by Harpaz in the year 2010, the biggest countries in telecommuting were United States at 27 percent, Sweden at 15 percent, the Netherlands at 14 percent, and Finland at 17 percent. The reason for the high rate of telecommuting in the United States can be attributed to the size of the organization, the long distances makes working at home a better alternative. Countries such as Finland and the Netherlands are the best developed countries in ICT facilities which are required for telecommuting.
Telecommuting has brought a lot of changes in the manner workers are supervised, it reduces direct supervision, feedback and coordination. Supervisors have to measure workers productivity in a different manner than how they would have done in traditional work environment. Therefore, performance can be measured only by results quality instead of dedicated time to achieve it. Well managed telecommuting brings a lot of benefits to the organization, the benefits includes: positive image for the organization; a company that facilitates telecommuting is viewed by the public as progressive and modern. Significant decrease in absence levels; the employees can continue working even when not feeling well compared to a physical office where one has to take sick leave. Increased productivity; enables an organization access a pool of skilled individuals, and more cost savings; this is because there will be no need for renting offices and maintenance (Anon, 2003).

The new policy calls for workers physically being together

It is justified for XYZ company employees to be physically together; this is because working at home can impair the employees’ ability to influence other individuals and other events in the workplace. Telecommuting can be detrimental to individuals with strong need for extensive social life and social interaction. The transition from work issues to aspects related to home and vice versa can be a potential problem to telecommuters. Information overload is another problem that makes it necessary for employees physically present in the office. Unlike traditional work groups working face-to-face, telecommuting employees suffer a great disadvantage because there is no such interaction. Since telecommuting workers use electronic communication media like email, instant messaging, fax, video conferencing, telephone, and chat, information overload is likely to occur. Another issue is the overability syndrome or invasion of private life. Despite the claims by many that telecommuting improves work life balance, other organizations expect their telecommuting employees to be accessible on the phone every time or via email, this will have negative impact on the efficiency of the employee especially during the times when there is high traffic in the network or network disconnection. The security of the company’s critical information is not guaranteed since there are many hackers out there digging for such information for their malicious intentions, it is therefore better for employees to be physically present in the office in order to reduce these kinds of risks which can be catastrophic when they occur (Kurland & Bailey, 2001). 

Application of IT

Effective and efficient telecommuting is not possible without technology. If XYZ Company wants to reconsider telecommuting, all its employees should be able to use computers, fax machines, and communication software so as to do their job as expected. The company employees should know how to protect and secure their computer resources from potential hackers, malicious software, and viruses. Supervisors and workers should be very conversant of networking technology so that they are in position to resolve minor issues of connection. In telecommuting, telephone lines and modems connect virtual conferences and offices. Good communication is therefore a very crucial element of a telecommuting experience that is successful. Using modern communication technology allows telecommuters to connect with their offices effectively and efficiently to convey information electronically.
In order to make sure that there is proper security in XYZ Company, secure gateways should be installed. This is because for telecommuting to be secure, companies must decide what is to be made available to telecommuting workers using public networks, make sure that only the authorized users can get access to internal network, and make sure that firewalls works properly. A secure gateway can be used to divide the internal resources depending on telecommuters access needs. For instance, computers with company’s critical data can be separated using gateways from those systems low risk levels. A series of gateways can also be used to restrict further access to systems with very sensitive information. The company can use current firewalls technology to give virtual access by making use of proxies. In addition, the firewalls can use IP filtering to limit system user’s access to some types of resources. Telecommuting employees who access directly internal systems should be authenticated robustly and should be routed to some specific computer systems. Combination of robust routing and authentication significantly increases security (Gordon, 2000). 

Working environment

A very important difference between working at an office and working at home is the presence of workmates. The fact that an individual works all alone at home throughout a day can affect performance. Although it does not apply to all people, many individuals seem to need the feeling of belonging to a group or a team. This psychological aspect of an individual being separated from office environment which contains workmates, new occurrences and developments is very important for many people. Although some people feel better when they stay to work at home, since they are able to see their children and partners more frequently, the absence of colleagues around can negatively affect the quality of their work. The fact that employees work at home, important information should be accessed from home. It is therefore not safe because confidential documents can be stolen from the employee’s desk at home, or his or her car. Many employees live in environments which are less secured compared to their actual office. As soon as an employee starts working at home, the manager will not be in position to check the location of the important documents.

References

Anon. (2003). Practical Telecommuting Technologies. Whitepaper, IntelCorporation . Retrieved February 13, 2015 from <www.intel.com>
Gordon, G. (2000). Telecommuting: Emphasizing Work, Not the Work Place. Journal of Accounting and EDP, pp. 34-41.
Kurland, N. & Bailey, D. (2001). Telework: the advantages and challengesof working here, there and anywhere, and anytime. Organizational Dynamics, 28 (2) pp. 48-72.
Baruch, Y. (2001). The status of research on teleworking and an agendafor future research. International Journal of Management Reviews, 3(2) pp. 113-129.