Business and Business Ethics
INTRODUCTION
After the Industrial Revolution, businesses were run at a separate place, where all the employees would come together and invest their time in performing the business activities. Employees were tightly bounded to their workplaces and could not take their work at home . However, information technology brought drastic changes that affected not only businesses, but employees as well. Digital technologies like personal computers and internet enabled business owners and employees to do work from homes . Individuals sitting in Western countries can make business deals with individuals sitting in Eastern countries with the help of internet. Information technology has given a boost to globalization phenomenon. Now businesses can expand so easily by reaching their potential customers through internet. In fact many businesses are now run from home with the name of online businesses because they do not need a separate place as everyone has got their own computers with high-speed internet. It has given boost to the employment levels in different nations. This decentralized framework, known as telecommuting, adopted by almost every well-established business around the globe has given a lot of ease to human beings. They can work from their homes easily and quickly. Besides that, telecommuting has not only helped employees to work in a relaxing environment but it has helped them in saving different types of costs.
Now not only the companies, but the governments as well encourage their public to do telecommuting because it helps in benefitting the economic conditions and foreign relations of the country. In United States of America, various states have passed legislation to encourage companies and their employees to do telecommuting. However, telecommuting is not as easy as it may sound because the person who is telecommuting is faced with different barriers or implications that he or she need to sort out on his or her own. It means that he or she needs to invest time and energy to learn how to properly telecommute only then he or she will be able to work efficiently and effectively .
DEFINITION OF TELECOMMUTING
Americans say telecommuting and Europeans say teleworking. Both these terms refer to working at home, working at a different location than the office, working off-site or working remotely. In this process, employees exchange emails with the clients or vendors, update the database, work on the company’s database software like Oracle, update employee’s profiles. Telecommuters either work part-time or full-time, employee initiated or company initiated or formally or informally. Telecommuters need a personal computer, laptop or a tablet along with high-speed internet to work. Some telecommuters might even need fax machines in order to exchange hard copies of the documents .
WAYS OF TELECOMMUTING
Telecommuting is an option offered by many companies to their employees and almost all the employees take advantage of this option. Telecommuters are given three or four days to work off-site and one or two days to work in the office. They have to follow the human resource policies just like the other employees working from company offices. Employees that work from client’s location or vacation’s spot are also known as telecommuters. Hence sometimes, telecommuting becomes necessity for the companies. Companies provide their employees with contracts in which the policies for telecommuting are mentioned. Once the employees sign these contracts, they are bind to follow the policies. This contract holds information like the works tasks that are assigned to the employee, amount of times the employee needs to interact with the clients, boss, customers, vendors or other workers and deadline of the contract. When telecommuting, employees are called in office weekly or monthly so that they do not get accustomed to isolation, their confidence and communication skills are revamped and they interact with their colleagues .
HOW TELECOMMUTING BENEFITS THE BUSINESSES
Companies that heavily rely on computer, internet and phone technology to run their business adopt the telecommuting option. They benefit a lot from telecommuting; they compete better with their rivals, save costs and they globalize to reach potential markets. The employees benefit as well; their work and personal life is balanced, their productivity increases, their transportation costs are saved, they do not get stuck in daily car traffic and they work without disturbance. Telecommuting is really effective for employees who do research, read or write extensively. Moreover, employees spend more hours working when they are working from home; hence producing more results.
EFFECTS OF TELECOMMUTING ON THE ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY:
Telecommuting also benefits the environment and society. When telecommuters work from home they are not using cars that run on petrol or diesel; hence they are keeping the environment free from carbon dioxide emissions. In addition to that, telecommuters are not becoming part of the traffic that adversely affects the public. Telecommuting is most suitable for individuals who live far away from their workplace.
WHO ARE SUITABLE FOR TELECOMMUTING?
Telecommuting is not suitable for every kind of employee. It may sound an attractive option to most employees; however companies should carefully decide which employees to select for telecommuting. Most companies allow telecommuting to permanent employees who have thorough knowledge of how telecommuting works in their organization. They even give training to their employees so that they learn to do telecommuting effectively. Employees who have big family or not a proper office environment at home are discouraged to do telecommuting. Highly computer literate individuals are encouraged to do telecommuting because they work on computer fast. A telecommuter should have the following characteristics:
- Good time management and organizational skills
The telecommuters should be able to design an effective schedule. They should not waste time and other resources, should meet deadlines of the work; in fact, they should plan ahead of time.
- Independent, responsible and confident
As telecommuters are not frequently supervised or given feedback so they should make careful decisions. They should not be afraid of working at home consistently. They should coach other co-workers on telecommuting as well.
- Self-motivated
Telecommuters should not rely completely on supervision, but be self-motivated. They should not be confused or double-minded about the work tasks. They should also delegate work to their subordinates effectively.
- High performance
Telecommuters should produce consistent results that meet the company’s expectations. Working from home does not mean that telecommuters will not be accountable if they delivered inefficient results.
- Professional
Telecommuters will face a lot of problems on their own. They should have all the required knowledge and skills to solve those problems without asking for anybody’s help.
- Concentrated
When working from home, telecommuters may face many distractions. If you have chosen telecommuting instead of working from office then home distractions is an excuse for low productivity. This might even jeopardize telecommuter’s job; therefore, he or she should be careful.
- Reliable and trustworthy
Only highly trusted individuals are offered telecommuting options by the company. Telecommuters should respect the work ethics and do not run away from the tasks assigned to them. They are accountable to the company
- Comfortable with isolation
Some people cannot work in isolation; they need people around them otherwise they get easily distracted or depressed. Such people will find difficulty in becoming telecommuters.
- Excellent communication skills
Individuals telecommuting do not meet their coworkers, bosses or subordinates frequently; hence, they have to communicate with them through telephone calls or emails regularly so that they are updated with your progress.
TRAINING ON TELECOMMUTING
If employees are not given training or mentoring on telecommuting then this whole idea can fail and then the company will face huge loss. Handling telecommuting and telecommuters require expert knowledge that need to be learned first by both the supervisors and the subordinates. Effective training will result in high morale of the employees, productivity, relaxation and other benefits. In the training the employees are taught:
- How to manage time effectively when telecommuters are working from home. Each employee faces different problems and unless they talk about it in the training session they cannot telecommute successfully.
- Working from home does not mean that they will be given less work. The organization will give them same amount of work as it would if telecommuters work from office. They just need to better manage the work load and personal life.
- Training sessions help telecommuters how to set objectives, how to achieve them on time and how to enhance their productivity.
- Most employees think that while telecommuting, they cannot communicate with their co-workers effectively. The training removes this misconception and helps them enhance communication between telecommuters and their coworkers.
- In some training sessions, spouses or other family members are also invited to learn how to let the telecommuter work in the best possible way from home. This saves telecommuters’ time, who might spend hours explaining his or her family members what kind of work he or she is dealing with.
IMPLICATIONS OF TELECOMMUTING
Although telecommuting had massive benefits, telecommuters are faced with a lot of challenges. First of all, when an employee is working from home, he or she gets frequently distracted by his or her family members, pets or other visitors. He or she is unable to divide time between their work and personal life. Therefore, most telecommuters are found working late evenings or after midnights.
When employees are working from home, they are more motivated to relax than to work and so they waste their time sleeping or wasting time. Such individuals face difficulty in meeting deadlines.
Employees who telecommute for a long time become socially isolated as they interact with their coworkers face-to-face only few times; hence, breaking the informal bond between the colleagues that helps in motivating the employees to work diligently at the work place.
An organization is able to save huge amounts of overhead costs because of telecommuting; however, it is faced with other types of challenges. It has to go against the organizational culture and get accustomed to the new way of doing business. Business ethics and norms does not support the idea that employees work from home because it ruins the idea of having a proper place where nothing else happens except for work. Some employees find difficulty in adopting such culture. It has to arrange coaching sessions for the employees willing to telecommute; this can take a lot of time. It can only allow young employees to telecommute and not the elderly employees as they are unable to cope up with the dynamics of digital technology. It cannot measure the performance and productivity of the employees or supervise the employees all the time because they are working from home. Some employees who are telecommuting get annoyed if they are called frequently to the office. In telecommuting process, teamwork and synergy are not practiced; this can bring feelings of hostility amongst the employees.
SOLUTIONS
It is the duty of the organization to design such human resource policies that allow so much flexibility to the employees that they are able to work better through telecommuting. It should not persuade the employees to do telecommuting rather present the with a choice; whether they like to work from home or work at an office, whatever suits them. The organization can offer rewards to those telecommuters that perform beyond expectations as this will motivate them to work more when at home. Although nowadays decentralization of work has proven beneficial for most businesses; but it does not mean that there should not be any centralized procedure. A little bit of bureaucracy or centralization is necessary to make the employees realize the seriousness of the work. The organization should distribute the work between the employees fairly and should design the tasks that are very interesting so that telecommuters enjoy working. Telecommuters should not be frequently communicated through telephone calls or emails so that they do not feel that they are not being watched by the organization .
CONCLUSION
There are so many perks of telecommuting that it is bound to increased in the future. Right now, organizations do not rely on telecommuting; however, the extent of adopting this means of working suggests that soon organizations will completely rely on it. Every kind of organization can offer telecommuting to its employees, but not all individuals are suitable for such way of working. Only highly experienced and professional individuals can do telecommuting. Due to this reason, now there are many training sessions given to the employees to enable them work from home or any other location.
References
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Brown, J. M. (2010, March). Telecommuting: The Affects and Effects on Non-Telecommuters. Virginia: Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-04012010-170021/unrestricted/Brown_JMO_D_2010_f1.pdf
Gajendran, R. S., & Harrison, D. A. (2007). The Good, the Bad and the Unknown about Telecommuting: Meta Analysis of Psychological Mediators and Individual Consequences. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1524-1529. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18020794
Hamilton, E. (n.d.). Bringing Work Home: Advantages and Challenges of Telecommuting. Boston: The Center for Work & Family. Retrieved from https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/centers/cwf/research/publications/pdf/BCCWF_Telecommuting_Paper.pdf
Lakoff, N. J., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html
