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The Internet, a Great Resource for Teleworkers

Ann Moffatt

Director, Technology Solutions Pty Ltd
Level 14, 33 Berry Street
North Sydney NSW 2060

Abstract
Implemented appropriately, Telecommuting provides business enterprises with many benefits including significant increases in worker productivity and quality of work produced, and more motivated workers. It can provide workers with flexibility and choice, enabling them to live and work where and when they choose, seeing work as only one component of a rich and varied lifestyle.

Why then are we not then all working this way? How can we ensure that teleworking is successful in an enterprise? What are the issues for managers?

Keyword
Internet, Telecommuting, Teleworkers.

Introduction

In the past, one of the significant issues for teleworkers was access to information resources such as reference libraries, expert information, stock exchange/financial markets/ prices, newspapers and periodicals, social chit/chat. With the wider availability of Internet access, all these resources are now available to workers outside the enterprise. Many of these resources are now better than those in even the richest of our commercial and government enterprises only 5 years ago.

Teleworking: the benefits

Implemented appropriately, Telecommuting provides business enterprises with many benefits including significant increases in worker productivity and quality of work produced, and more motivated workers. It can provide workers with flexibility and choice, enabling them to live and work where and when they choose, seeing work as only one component of a rich and varied lifestyle.

Why then are we not then all working this way? How can we ensure that teleworking is successful in an enterprise? What are the issues for managers?

The Components of successful telework

There are four components all of which have to be carefully considered and properly implemented to ensure success. As these components are interactive, all must be "right" to achieve a successful teleworking initiative.

The Work

How is suitable work selected?

There are three types of work which are successfully carried out by workers who work outside an office environment. Examples of each are given below.

  • Work assessed by results only
    • -Sales
    • -telemarketing
    • -'fixed price' or piecework
    • -consultancy, accounting, bookkeeping etc.
  • Work which requires a high degree of individual creativity
    • -design, architecture, technical drawing
    • -creative writing
    • -journalism
    • -research
    • -report writing
  • Work which can be well defined and easily measured.
    • -insurance administration
    • -customer service which does not require face to face contact with the customer, e.g. telephone directory enquiries.
    • -computer programming
The term "telecommuting" was first coined by Jack Nilles, an academic in the USA, in the 1970s in his paper The Telecommunications-Transportation Trade-off . Jack used the term to describe an information worker working from a home base using a telephone.

Of the three types of work listed above, the first and second types have been carried out outside an office environment for many years. Although these workers are telecommuters as the term was defined by Jack Nilles, they would have continued to work outside the office irrespective of the advances in Information Technology and Telecommunications (IT&T) which have undoubtedly made their work easier and improved communications with their office and their customers.

Often the people working in these first two areas are independent contractors or members of small businesses or co-operatives where their remuneration often depends on their performance.

It is people doing these two types of work that are usually the first to be 'unofficially approved' as teleworkers in larger enterprises. Called Tele-guerrillas by Professor Jack Wood, these workers usually negotiate informal agreements with their immediate supervisors, often to satisfy a personal situation such as the late stages of pregnancy, temporary incapacity such as a broken leg which makes travelling difficult, or to satisfy a temporary dependant care responsibility.

The problem with this informal arrangement is that both the worker and the enterprise are often unprepared for telework. The support infrastructure is not in place, the legal implications are often unclear and the situation is seen as "only temporary". These issues, and their effect people will be examined further below.

There is no doubt that some of the benefits of teleworking can and are derived in these two types of work. However, it is in the third category that the real challenges and benefits emerge.

How is the work defined?

In Australian enterprises, the work of information workers in service industries, like insurance and banking, is often poorly defined and rarely measured. This is different from practises in similar enterprises in the USA and Europe.

One of the reasons that the work of information workers is not well defined is that as the workers are usually articulate and well educated, it is often considered that, given broad guidelines, they will "work out what is required" by discussion with colleagues. The work is not usually measured because is it is more difficult to measure than work where the output is easily identified.

It is often not until a there is a "reason" for work to be measured that this aspect is considered. Sometimes the catalyst to this is the advent of a Teleworking initiative. To be successful, it is imperative that work measurement procedures are introduced and stabilised before a teleworking initiative starts.

How is telework measured?

To accurately measure the amount and quality of work consideration must be given to the service levels and throughput required by the enterprise and the work must be well defined. Also, the way in which work flows between people in the enterprise, individual responsibilities, prerequisites for each task and interfaces between tasks needs to be defined. It is my experience that this exercise is valuable and increases quality and productivity of office based workers, but it is essential that these procedures are in place and well matured before considering a teleworking initiative. If this is not so moving to a teleworking initiative will not achieve the improvements in productivity and quality (between 20% and 100%) experienced by appropriately prepared enterprises.

If work cannot be accurately defined and quality and throughput measured there is a high likelihood that it is not suitable for teleworkers.

Other work related considerations

Other considerations of work suitability include the amount of face to face contact with customers and people inside and outside the enterprise. The worker's home office is often not an appropriate place in which to meet these people. Arrangements can be made to meet in the enterprise office, at the customer's premises or at a nearby telecentre.

Security is often another issue. It is my belief that if there are appropriate procedures in place in the office then these can be replicated in the home office at little additional cost. Rather like work definition and measurement, security of work done outside the office is often an issue that is only considered when teleworking is mooted, and it is often (wrongly) given as a reason why the work cannot be done in the home office. I, and many others, have worked on top secret defence projects, high security nuclear energy projects, plus extremely sensitive business processes, all from a home office.

Access to resources is another work related issue. For information workers, much of the information needed is now available via the enterprise computer. Access to other resources such as library information and on-line data on financial indicators or research papers plus travel information and up to date news services are now all available through private or commercial information providers.

The People

The issues relating to teleworkers themselves are complex. Many teleworking initiatives fail by calling for volunteers either for the pilot or the large scale implementation. Too often the people who volunteer do so to solve personal problems such as the need to care for a dependant family member (or pet!), a way to overcome difficult or arduous travelling arrangements, a way to work at a time that suits them, (this usually applies to people who prefer not to get out of bed early!), people who have poor social and/or interpersonal skills.

These are not good reasons to choose those people for teleworking but often do not emerge until they have been teleworking for some time and are not successful.

How are people selected?

In addition to skills, experience and good references, people who work well as teleworkers have reached the higher levels of Maslow's Hierarchy . i.e. they:- It is often thought that people who have reached the higher levels of Maslow's Hierarchy cannot be young. This is not so. A teenager living at home with parents, or in a group residence, or even living by themselves, can have the first need satisfied. Whereas another young person, or a single parent, or even quite an elderly worker may be inordinately worried by inadequate physical provisions. Similarly I am often surprised by the number of people, men as well as women, who find working at home during the day in a quiet suburb quite threatening in terms of their personal safety.

Today, many people see their office colleagues as their support group. Taken away from that group they simply cannot function. Someone who is gregarious and the 'heart and soul' of the office similarly has difficulty functioning outside the office environment.

Someone who has a driving ambition to be at a higher position in the enterprise and equates 'rank' with personal status rather than being content with and proud of their current achievements will, in my experience, similarly not be a happy teleworker.

It is also my experience that if the person is 'busy' and has lots of diverse activities, seeing work as just one of those activities, but being able to successfully plan and co-ordinate between activities, then that person will have a high likelihood of success as a teleworker. Nevertheless, even after careful selection, about 50% of the people 'drop out' of teleworking after 6 to 12 months. Those who remain are good, able workers who continue to telework so long as it suits them.

What extra skills do Teleworkers need?

The two most useful skills to a teleworker, in addition to the obvious skills of time management and personal organisation, are good communications skills and good negotiation skills.

Teleworkers' communications must be of a much higher level than those of office based workers who have the added advantage of being able to discuss issues face to face. Also, if the teleworker works at different times from his/her colleagues often voice mail or e-mail is the main communication method and telephone tag the frustrating game most played. Written rather than spoken communications are more used. To be successful, improved communications skills are also needed for teleworkers' office based colleagues, managers and subordinates.

Improved negotiating skills are similarly needed for teleworkers and their colleagues. In a recent study by the School of Psychology at Queensland University on how people perceive teleworking. Potential teleworkers, their managers and their office based work associates were asked to rate the current situation and their 'ideal' situation in ten work-related areas. They were then asked to rate the situation when telework was involved. In all but one case they rated the telework situation much nearer their ideal than the current situation.

This finding matches my own experience. Remember that none of the respondents in the study had actually had experience of telework and yet they had 'idealised' the situation.

In his book, Teleworking Explained [4], Gil Gordon gives several instances of people who had high expectations of what life would be like when they became a teleworker. It is important that these people are helped to set realistic expectations and are given skills to negotiate and assertively express their needs and expectations with others such as other household members, office based work colleagues, managers and subordinates.

How are teleworkers motivated?

It is my experience that if teleworkers are carefully selected and trained motivation is never an issue. However, issues that do DEmotivate a teleworker are non inclusion in work related and social events in the enterprise. The term 'out of sight, out of mind' can easily apply to teleworkers!

Care must be taken to seek out opportunities to include teleworkers in enterprise events, even if they then choose not to be included!! I do not believe, however, that bringing teleworkers into the office "because its time" or "because its there" are ways of solving this issue. There is a rhythm to teleworking that should not be artificially manipulated. Thus the 'two days a week in the office-three days at home' concept in the Home-based work award for federal public sector workers or the '5 days in the office each month' concept in the Telstra award appear to me to serve no good purpose. I believe that workers should be given a workplace location designation as "home office" or "enterprise office" as the principal place of work with each being able to work in the other place as work and personal needs dictate.

Given the right skills, and the right people, the right technology, the right management and the right work, teleworkers will work well, be well motivated and be loyal to the enterprise even if they visit only very occasionally.

The Technology

What is needed?

The technology needed to support teleworkers is one of the simplest aspects of this complex equation. The simple rule of thumb is if it is needed to do the job in the office, then it is necessary in the home.

Two issues arise. The first is that the setting up of a home office is often seen as an opportunity to provide new technology. As teleworkers have to learn to overcome many workplace changes, it is preferable that, if at all possible, the technology to be used initially be that with which the teleworker is familiar. At a later time new technology to facilitate the special needs of teleworkers may be introduced.

The second issue is that some of the equipment may be needed only occasionally or may be difficult to cost justify for an individual home office. The options here are to collaborate with other workers at a nearby telecentre, if one exists, or to go to the office or another worker's home office to use the equipment there.

What sort of support is needed?

Teleworkers have to learn at least two skills relating to support. The first is to be resourceful and learn how to be self sufficient. The second is to learn when to seek help.

There is a tendency for teleworkers to try to solve their own problems as they may think that they will loose what they see as a privileged way of working if they call for help too often. On the other hand, it is usually more expensive to service a home office. One way of overcoming this issue is training, another is to establish a register of problems and appropriate actions for circulation to all teleworkers in the enterprise, a third is to set up a 'big sister/big brother' scheme assigning experienced teleworkers to look after new teleworkers until they feel confident of their own understanding of support needs or establish their own support network.

How does this differ from office based worker support?

The only real difference between office base and home based worker support is that home based workers usually learn quickly how to be self sufficient and improvise until a solution is found. Home based office support is more expensive. In my experience these two aspects usually balance out as the teleworker gains experience and confidence.

The Management

Which management style is successful?

In Australia, management attitudes seem to be one of the biggest barriers to successful teleworking. Because of the lack of work definition and measurement for information workers, Australian management seems to rely on time spent and work attitude to evaluate performance. Too often, an Australian management style seems to be a 'telling, controlling, dominating' style. The style most suited to teleworkers is the more modern 'negotiating, empowering, supporting' style.

As teleworking in large enterprises is fairly new, although there is now considerable evidence in research studies that the productivity and quality of work produced by teleworkers is significantly higher than that of their office-based colleagues, (20% to 100% increases are quoted) the reason for the increases are not yet fully established. Two contributing factors that are now widely reported are that career episodes are twice as long for teleworkers, reducing the time lost in changing personnel, and sick leave for teleworkers is half that for office based workers. However, there is much research on the time spent by office based workers. The research agrees that 50% of time is spent socialising, politicking and game playing. In her book, Building Bridges , Anne Gorman gives several references and lists some of the company games played. Many are certainly familiar to me!!

Successful teleworkers are mature individuals who are happy to take responsibility for their own work outcomes. They do not need to use work as a substitute for social relationships which they usually build outside the enterprise. Having high self esteem, they do not need to spend time politicking or game playing. The best way to manage teleworkers is, therefore, to define the task to be done and the interfaces between tasks done by other associated workers, to negotiate effort and elapsed time schedules, provide the appropriate resources and infrastructure and leave the teleworker to get on with the job. The only 'management' needed is to support the teleworker in their endeavours and clear 'roadblocks' and other barriers to the achievement of agreed goals. Of course, information on progress, productivity and quality of work must be willingly provided by the teleworker to assist the overall management process.

What sort of support Infrastructure is needed?

Although successful teleworkers are self motivated, self sufficient, resourceful people, like all of us they need to understand how their work fits with that of their colleagues, whether office based or other teleworkers. They need to feel that their efforts are appreciated by the enterprise and receive praise when appropriate. They also need to know, and accept, that they are being measured and take correction when appropriate.

All these issues will be no surprise to well experienced managers. The difference is that giving and receiving positive or negative 'strokes' and understanding how the individual's work fits into the grand plan is made more difficult when the workers are seldom seen by their managers.

In the case of the teleworker, special effort is needed to identify an appropriate time to make comments and good communications skills are needed ensure that the intended message is received. When workers and managers share the same workplace and have face to face contact it is easier to pick the right time and receive verbal and visual messages to confirm that the intended message has been correctly received. However, just as 'familiarity breeds contempt' often the time is not taken, even in the office situation, to make time for regular worker appraisal and review.

In F International, the UK teleworking company I worked for for eight years, the last two as Technical Director, when I was responsible for 400 workers, successful management was not achieved until managers also worked from home and better understood the needs of their workers. Whilst I do not believe that it is necessary that all teleworkers' managers must have experience of teleworking they must be trained to use a management style appropriate to the task.

Another important element of infrastructure needed to support teleworkers is access to resource information that may not be available outside the enterprise, The Internet and other information resource networks serve this purpose well. Additionally, a need to communicate with people working in the enterprise and other teleworkers usually means a higher level of telecommunications costs, be the communication by voice, e-mail or other electronic networking techniques.

A higher focus on opportunities for socialising between teleworkers and office based workers leads to higher than expected costs of travel, (although these are not higher than if the teleworker was travelling to the office), and communications, in the form of newsletters and technical tips also serve to increase infrastructure costs.

When new procedures are introduced in the enterprise teleworkers need good training to enable them to be self sufficient or communications costs will increase as they try to get the support they need from colleagues.

Teleworking is often justified by reductions in infrastructure costs such as office space. Although real estate costs are reduced there is an increase in communications costs such that, overall, overheads are increased to about 105% of overheads for office based workers. If an appropriate infrastructure is not provided for teleworkers, then productivity and quality gains are not achieved. However, the 5% extra cost to establish an appropriate infrastructure will pay for itself in terms of productivity and quality gains.

How are individual teleworkers managed?

It would appear to be easier to manage individual teleworkers rather than a large project involving many workers some of which are home based and some office based.

In Australia today, most large-scale teleworking initiatives are based on the first two types of work outlined at the beginning of this paper. Most teleworkers in government or private enterprises are 'one off' tele-guerrillas. These people do, however, need special management consideration. Because they are few, usually it is not cost-effective to install the infrastructure outlined above. Never-the-less the rules of good work definition, measurement and reporting procedures still apply.

It is very easy to forget to communicate with 'one off' teleworkers. This happened to me when I worked from home for Kodak after my first baby was born. It seemed to me that every time I delivered some work something in the specification had been changed without my knowledge. Everyone was always very apologetic but I felt very bad about it. The sense of pride felt when delivering the fruits of my labours was negated by the knowledge that more changes had to be made before the task was really complete. Although the 'fault' was not mine, I felt somehow responsible.

Because these people often have special needs they may need more management support, and yet because they are rare birds this need for support may not be appreciated by their managers or co-workers. In addition, not only may productivity not be increased, it may be decreased when compared to office based colleagues leading to greater sensitivity and a feeling of anxiety and less self worth causing increased worker stress. If this experience is taken as representative of what can be achieved through teleworking then teleworking itself will be seen as not successful.

How are large mixed teleworker/office based worker projects managed?

It is in this area that the real benefits of teleworking can be achieved. Several USA Insurance companies report productivity and quality increases of greater than 20% from large scale telework initiatives.

In my time, F International completed many large and complex projects using the skills of teleworkers working with office based staff from customer organisations. These included the development of systems such as the personnel and payroll system for 500,000 British public servants. FI was responsible for the application of Computer Aided Design to Hospital building. This involved 200 companies producing and providing all manner of components used in hospital building. FI had 50 people working on the project and was responsible for the overall project management and project control on behalf of the Department of Health. We also built the first computerised settlement system for the British Stock Exchange. FI now has a turnover of over $60 million a year and has over 1000 professionals working on a flexible basis.

The management principles outlined above are all needed to ensure a successful outcome. To summarise, these are:-

If the measures described above are adopted the result will be well motivated teleworkers who are less stressed and produce work of a significantly higher quality at a greater productivity rate than their office based colleagues.

Footnotes

[1]
Development of Policy on the Telecommunications-Transportation Trade-off by Professor Jack Nilles University of Southern California, Report no NSF-RA-5-74-020 Later published as part of : The Telecommunications-Transportation Trade-off: Options for Tomorrow by Jack Nilles Published by John Wiley & Sons New York 1976
[2]
Motivation and Personality by AH Maslow published by Harper and Row, New York 1954
[3]
The Expected Impact of Telecommunications aided work organisation on the residence and central work location: A Psychological Perspective. by Mark Groves, Department of Psychology, University of Queensland Leisa Sargent, School of Management, Human Resources and Industrial Relations, Queensland University of Technology and Elke Graf, Department of Commerce, University of Queensland.
[4]
Teleworking Explained by Gil Gordon et al Published by John Wiley & Sons 1993
[5]
Building Bridges. An Australian Guide to Making Technology and People Work Successfully Together. by Anne Gorman and Sue Robinson. A Social Impacts Publication 1987 IBSN 0 9592335 9 8
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