Research Paper

Telecommute: Creating a Balanced Employee

Executive Summary

Telecommuting or teleworking (these words are used interchangeably throughout this paper) refers to working inside the home or at a remote workstation. Recently, teleworking has become increasingly popular. People commute using a number of different modalities, including, cars, buses and trains. Particularly for individuals that reside in large metropolitan areas, commuting is a natural part of life. However, with the growing opportunities of teleworking, there are several benefits to teleworking. Some benefits directly impact the employee, some the employer and some external factors such as family and the environment. Teleworking can conserve energy, improve family values, and improve morale amongst employees. Researchers estimate that there are more than 20 million people working from home via telecommute.

Throughout my paper, I will identify the many benefits of telecommuting; in hopes of creating a more, well-rounded, balanced employee. While telecommuting can be flexible, convenient and cost-effective for many businesses, it can also present a number of problems. Those problems include, but are not limited to, issues with productivity, poor time management and 'workaholic' tendencies. There is also a large financial cost to telecommuting that companies have to consider. More importantly, the cost for technical support and systems must be considered.

Identifying a systematic process to manage employees is important to developing a telework benefit that is effective. A system that is designed poorly can negatively affect the organization, so organizations must be certain that a telework benefit merges well with their business model as not every job is appropriate for remote work. Making a sure to do the research beforehand will potentially save the company from unforeseen issues in the future. Often times, workers see the many benefits of...