Telecommuting – Benefits for the Employee, Employer and the Environment

July 8, 2008 | No Comments

The term “telecommuting” has found its way into all areas of work and the community of e-commuters is growing in number.

These days anything and everything is done online and the internet has made the world a smaller place. Today, one can reach anybody in any part of the world by the simple touch of a button. Digital data can be easily transferred from one place to another, from one media to another. A world of information is at one’s fingertips once there is access to the internet. With technology at the fore front and telecommunications improving at this rapid rate, things from grocery shopping to finding jobs is easier through the internet. Working from home has also been easier and has proven to be a viable alternative to working at the office.

There are many advantages in telecommuting. For the employee, it provides the flexibility in both the working hours and in the location of work. It saves them the commuting time and gives them more time for productive work. With no commute, lunch at home and no office attire, expenses are also low.

The employer can save considerable resources in terms of office space, facilities and equipments. With VPN (virtual Private Networks) and hosted solutions being widespread, a telecommuting employee can use PC, network connections and equipments at home. Secure network connections enable a person to work from home while gaining access to data at the office networks. This reduces the cost of maintaining office equipments and providing dedicated access to employees. Also in many cases, employees who work from home are able to work effectively for more hours. Continuous working hours at the office can be replaced by working at home between breaks and hence can be more productive.

Telecommuting can be beneficial to the environment also. With global warming and pollution being a worldwide problem, commute to work can add significantly to environmental problems. Many organizations now encourage car-pooling. Working at home is better than car-pooling!

Technology has made communication smooth and easy. An office environment can be simulated even if an employee is working from home. Phone calls, chats, teleconferencing and emails are used even for communicating while in office. All these can be used as efficiently to communicate with a telecommuting employee. And yet there are certain issues and drawbacks to telecommuting that makes an employer prefer in-office work.

One of them is security risks that can be greatly reduced if the employers choose appropriate measures when engaging employees off-site. Use of a secure gateway or a firewall between the company’s network and the outside network restricts the flow of data to and from the company. Proper authentication measures for employee access from home and use of data encryption can significantly reduce intrusion and illegal data access.

Providing PCs designed specifically for a telecommuting employee may prove useful. The PCs can have inbuilt security features along with access control. Since PCs at home are at a risk of being accessed by other family members or visitors, fingerprinting can be used to operate the PC. In addition to these, IP filtering can be used to restrict access only to systems pre-approved by the corporation.

One drawback, however, may be related to the lack of face-to-face interaction with colleagues and team members. Certain types of job are suitable for independent work while other types of job require constant and frequent interaction with fellow workers. In the field of Information Technology, work that can be done effectively on an independent level can be isolated for telecommuting employees. Projects may require personal interaction and discussions during the design phase. During the phase of design, architecture and conceptualization, work can be done inside the office rooms. Projects in the development phase can be offered to telecommuting employees. Work that depends greatly on the creativity of a person can very well be done at home. Some work requires team effort and is effective with face-to-face interactions. Integration of modules built separately by individuals in a team may become tricky without proper discussions to fully understand the dependencies. Such work may again prove effective when the team operates in the same environment with regular interactions.

Once the type of work that can be offered to telecommuters is identified and appropriate measures to ensure security are taken, telecommuting can be used to benefit the employee, employer and the environment.

Written by Mahe Krishnan of www.easystorehosting.com

Posted in Telecommuting