Telecommuting Has Its Downsides!
There have been hundreds of articles written on the benefits of
telecommuting, but very few on the disadvantages. Although a lot
of people can point to the benefits of happier employees and
lower costs nothing is perfect and telecommuting does have some
serious downsides to the future of a business.
In my opinion, the biggest negative to telecommuting is the loss
of the informal exchange of ideas between staff. When most
companies are promoting a team effort, telecommuting places
employees in situations where they must often fend for
themselves. When telecommuting is implemented requests for
assistance or new ideas and concepts are generally circulated in
a formal manner, be it email or an Intranet web site message
boards. No longer can employee sit down with a colleague or walk
into the boss's office and say, "what do you think of this
idea?" This results in a lack of fertilization of new ideas and
concepts. Over the years, I have seen hundreds of ideas and
concepts hammered out over lunchroom tables and next to coffee
machines. I can actually recall a very successful new business
venture that started as a joke.
Secondarily is the individual growth of an employee. The
informal mentoring that occurs, or should be occurring, in every
company. Employees grow within an organization by learning from
their supervisors and colleagues. This education is primarily
informal and individuals, in many cases, learn by osmosis, by
filling in and by assisting other members of staff. Most, if not
all of this education is lost in a telecommuting environment.
Coupled with the informal mentoring is the constant informal
reinforcement of "great job", "well done", usually lost in the
telecommuting environment.
The third area that I believe is a negative in a telecommuting
environment is in detail work. If you are in a business
situation where large proposals are being written or other
substantial documentation is being produced, detail changes do
not happen because of the lack of convenience to implement them.
Because changes generally require formal communication, it
becomes easier to accept what has been produced rather than
asking someone to add or delete a word or change a format,
especially if the change is not truly critical.
The forth is very dependent on the individual involved. Everyone
needs a break, needs to get away from their work. Depending on
ones mental resolve, some people need to "leave" work in order
to get a break and in this case I mean physically leave work. If
work that should be done is sitting in one's home office or
worse yet on the dining room table can the individual, on Friday
at 5:00 pm, stop what they are doing and leave it to complete
until Monday at 8:00 am. Some people can, others cannot. The
employees that cannot are not getting that needed break. Some
employers may believe that they get more hours of work out of
telecommuting staff. The question is, are those hours productive?
Implementing a successful telecommuting strategy for your
business is much more than installing a computer and phone line
in someone's home.