MGT502 Module 3.1: Telecommuting Issues in Contemporary Organizations

This report delves into the multifaceted challenges of telecommuting in contemporary organizations. It examines issues such as the lack of face-to-face interaction, potential confusion in work strategies, and the need for organizations to foster a supportive environment for remote workers. The report highlights the risks associated with telecommuting, including lack of supervision, communication gaps, and the difficulty in maintaining a healthy work-life balance. It explores the impact of telecommuting on employee stress, the need for organizations to provide adequate support services, and the potential for professional isolation. The analysis draws on multiple research papers to provide a comprehensive understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of telecommuting, including its effects on employee performance, job satisfaction, and the overall success of the organization. The report also discusses the importance of selecting the right employees for telecommuting and the limitations of this model in certain business contexts, emphasizing the need for cohesive teamwork and agile methodologies. The report concludes by underscoring the importance of addressing the disadvantages of telecommuting, such as professional isolation, long working hours, and job insecurity, to ensure that remote work arrangements contribute to both employee well-being and organizational productivity.

Running head: TELECOMMUTING ISSUES IN ORGANIZATIONS
TELECOMMUTING ISSUES IN ORGANIZATIONS
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1TELECOMMUTING ISSUES IN ORGANIZATIONS
Challenges with Telecommuting in Contemporary Organizations
According to the authors Aban, Perez, Ricarte & Chiu (2019), most of the
organizations worldwide are practising telecommuting to facilitate their employees with
sufficient independence in their working style. No doubt, this is an effective measure taken
by the business executives to increase job satisfaction amongst the employees and increases
employee retention rate, yet there still exists an issue of lacking in personal interaction. The
organizations are trying their best to enhance support to the employees such that the
telecommuters attain job satisfaction by staying at home and working effectively. However,
due to difference in work arrangements and lack of face-to-face interaction, the
telecommuters might have confusion in their work strategies. Thus, it is the duty of the
organization to make the job profile interesting for the telecommuters, incorporate a Laissez-
faire leadership style such that they can try their experiments, and explore new methods of
working to increase their production rate significantly.
As per the research of Levine (2019), telecommuting although incorporates numerous
benefits, it has its own set of risks too. One major disadvantage of telecommuting is the lack
of supervision of the work that the employees are doing by staying away from the office
environment. The author highlights on the fact that the relationship shared between the leader
and his or her team members is a contributing factor for enhancing the production of the
organization. However, in case of telecommuting from home, neither the managers nor the
employees will be able to establish a strong professional bonding as they could have done in
office. The managers would like to know the working status of the employees at home, while
the concerned telecommuters might have problem in sharing their immediate details. This
will readily enhance the gap in communication and thus the managerial body of the
organizations might have issues in managing the telecommuters effectively.

2TELECOMMUTING ISSUES IN ORGANIZATIONS
According to the authors Leung & Zhang (2017), their study highlights the stress
factor of the telecommuters to balance their work life pressure and align it according to their
personal life even by staying at home. The progression in the Information Communication
Technology contributes to the phenomenon of ‘Telecommuting’ and helps the employees to
ease out their process of working style by working from home and offering other flexibilities.
However, this research highlights the result that most of the telecommuters are being unable
to differentiate between their work life and personal life and struggling to maintain a balance
between the two. Although the telecommuters can work in a flexible work environment with
various organizational support, they are also being burdened with extra work pressure leading
to a family-to-work conflict. Due to working from home, they are losing the permeable
boundary between their work and their home domain thus leading to significant stress and
anxiety due to technology.
Essien & Akhigbe (2017), states that the organizations are trying to accommodate
their employees with telecommuting support for numerous benefits such as increasing
organizational commitment, reducing employee turnover, increase in time availability for
work, higher production rate and many more. Although the telecommuters are benefitting
from this new age venture, it is beneficial for the organization too on various aspects such as
reducing turnover of organizational members and overhead costs associated with the office
work environment. However, in spite of all the benefits the organization has to take extra
pressure on facilitating with its telecommuters with features for enhancing the productivity of
the company. For instance, the companies have to arrange for the support services such as
providing computers and other necessary gadgets to the employees for robust quality of work.
It also has to ensure smooth Internet connection and support of electronic media to track
down the regular activities on the telecommuter’s end.

3TELECOMMUTING ISSUES IN ORGANIZATIONS
As said by the authors Masuda, Holtschlag & Nicklin (2017), the telecommuters
enjoy working at home because they can avoid the regular traffic while travelling to work and
maximize their production by working from home. However, the paper discusses about the
negative consequences of telecommuting, the major one being the professional isolation of
the employees from their managers or their subordinates. Working from office allows the
employees to avoid any kind of miscommunication while deciding on the ground rules of the
work processes. It also allows the employees to attend practical learning and monitoring
sessions from their seniors and reduce their errors to a significant rate. Furthermore, working
in office helps the employees to build a strong professional bond that can uplift their career to
another level. However, the telecommuters cannot incorporate these advantages while they
isolate themselves and work from home. The learning rate of the telecommuters reduces due
to the communication gap with other employees in office.
According to the research of the authors Ma, Hen & Chooi (2019), telecommuting is
the new technological phenomenon that the organizations are adopting to facilitate their
employees with ‘work from home’ features such that they can stay at home, fulfil their
responsibilities of and manage their home domain as well. However, the limitation of this
phenomenon is that the organizations can allow only their expert personnel to take the
advantage of telecommuting because they are experienced enough to manage the business
operations even by working from their suitable location. On the other hand, the
underperforming employees cannot enjoy telecommuting because they are neither efficient
nor do they have the experience to handle the adverse situation by working from home.
Hence, the research highlights that the organizations can only allow their talented experts to
enjoy the facilities of telecommuting and seek the inconsistently performing employees to
come to the organization and increase their set of expertise.

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According to the research of Sroka (2018), although telecommuting was a raging
phenomenon because it facilitated the workers to stay at home and enjoy the facilities of
work atmosphere, it is losing its value in the age of globalization due to some of its major
limitations. Telecommuting allows experienced people to conduct their job responsibilities
easily at home. However, many business operations nowadays demand a cohesive approach
from the team members as well as the inter-departmental members. By working in an office,
the employees will be able to communicate with each other and the most beneficiary part is
that they will be able to talk and sort out various issues as well as generate creative and
innovative solutions. Moreover, many IT organizations adopt the Agile methodology to
conduct their business processes that comprises of scrum meetings, updates from employees,
detection of issues and many other aspects that does not fit in the telecommuting facilities.
Onyemaechi, Chinyere & Emmanuel (2018) states that, telecommuting contributes to
various beneficial aspects of the organization such as cost and budget management, increase
in productivity, reducing the office associated costs. However, in case of telecommuting the
major problem lies in handling the potential issues of the organization in any adverse
conditions. The company must ensure that a good telecommuter should have the capability to
carry out their business operations via technological means and should be able to resolve any
issue independently. The organization expects an efficient telecommuter to be aware of the
resources allocated to him or her and determine the most feasible solution to resolve the
problems regarding his or her concerned project. Thus, although telecommuting offers to
maximize the organizational productivity, the companies must ensure that unless an
employee is efficient at his or her skills, he or she should not be allowed to take advantage of
telecommuting.
Drawing conclusions from the research work of Green (2019), the disadvantages of
telecommuting involves numerous aspects like, professional isolation, long working hours,

5TELECOMMUTING ISSUES IN ORGANIZATIONS
insecurity of jobs, harm in career development and resentment with co-workers.
Telecommuting allows skilled personnel to work efficiently from home and contribute to the
enhanced production of the organization. However, the isolation of the telecommuters
prevents them from developing personal and professional relationships along with the co-
workers leading to limiting their skill sets at a significant rate. Isolation also manifests on the
social status of the telecommuters and deprive them from the feeling of belongingness to
work. Due to the ‘out-of-sight and out-of-mind’ factor, the leaders are unable to measure the
performing capabilities of the telecommuters on a regular basis that leads to limiting their
opportunities for development in their career. Due to their significantly reduced appearance
in the office, the telecommuters also suffers from an insecurity to lose their jobs.
According to the research work of Picu & Dinu (2016), telecommuting incorporates
major risks not only for the organizations, but also on the telecommuters who are availing
work from their suitable locations other than office. The major negative impact on the
telecommuters due to their isolated working style is the low morale of the employees by
working from home and lacking the face-to-face interaction with the other employees of the
organization. Apart from suffering from low morale, another major disadvantage is that the
telecommuters get bothered with their household distractions and lose focus from their work.
Hence, the phenomenon that itself was designed to increase in production of the employees
by facilitating them with work from home, might lead to hamper in their production due to
the home domain issues. Thus, it will affect the employees in a negative way and result in
loss of their jobs. The organization tends to select wrong employees for telecommuting,
which is another disadvantage.

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Reference
Aban, C. J. I., Perez, V. E. B., Ricarte, K. K. G., & Chiu, J. L. (2019). The Relationship of
Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, and Perceived Organizational Support
of Telecommuters in The National Capital Region. Review of Integrative Business
and Economics Research, 8, 162-197.
Essien, C. E., & Akhigbe, O. J. (2017). Telecommuting Support Services: A Catalyst for
Increased Organizational Commitment in the Nigerian Banking
Industry. International Journal of Social Sciences, 11(4).
Green, C. R. (2019). Examining the effects of negative work outcomes on telecommuting.
Leung, L., & Zhang, R. (2017). Mapping ICT use at home and telecommuting practices: A
perspective from work/family border theory. Telematics and Informatics, 34(1), 385-
396.
Levine, J. H. (2019). Understanding E-mentoring, and self-efficacy with
telecommuters (Doctoral dissertation, Ashford University).
Ma, G., Hen, K. W., & Chooi, T. F. (2019). Telecommuting Adaptation in Malaysia:
Demographics, Beliefs and Practices. Asian Social Science and Humanities Research
Journal (ASHREJ), 1(1), 11-18.
Masuda, A. D., Holtschlag, C., & Nicklin, J. M. (2017). Why the availability of
telecommuting matters. Career Development International.
Onyemaechi, U., Chinyere, U. P., & Emmanuel, U. (2018). Impact of Telecommuting on
Employees’ Performance. Journal of Economics and Management Sciences, p54-p54.

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Picu, C. G., & Dinu, A. (2016). Research on the current telecommuting trends in United
States and european union markets. Management and Economics Review, 1(2), 194-
202.
Sroka, A. (2018). Is telecommuting the future of business. In 9th International Scientific
Conference Analysis of International Relations 2018. Methods and Models of
Regional Development. Winter Edition (pp. 147-153).