A Critical Look at Telework
SteveIf you are at all interested in the role of telework for your organization, for your team, or even for yourself, I recommend taking a little bit of time to read over a recent research piece titled, 'The hard truth about telecommuting', published in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Monthly Labor Review June 2012 issue.
In the piece, authors Mary C. Noonan and Jennifer L. Glass review the results of their recently completed research that examined the prevalence of telecommuting in the US workforce, the trends in adoption of telecommuting over time, and most interesting to me at least, how telecommuting arrangements tend over time to increase the total amount of hours worked, rather than simply substitute 'home' hours for 'office' hours. 
Mr. Brady - Working from home
If you are someone that currently or in the past has done at least some remote work for your organization, the study's most damning conclusion about telework probably will not be very surprising - that between half and two thirds of telework arrangements simply serve to add working hours to the work week, and doe not simply trade hours worked at home for hours that are normally spent working in the office. Details from the BLS piece:
Fully 67 percent of telecommuting hours in the NLSY (data) and almost 50 percent in the CPS (data) push respondents’ work hours above 40 per week and essentially occur as overtime work. This dynamic suggests that telecommuting in practice expands to meet workers’ needs for additional worktime beyond the standard workweek.
As a strategy of resistance to longer work hours at the office, telecommuting appears to be somewhat successful in relocating those hours but not eliminating them. A less sanguine interpretation is that the ability of employees to work at home may actually allow employers to raise expectations for work availability during evenings and weekends and foster longer workdays and workweek.
These findings, while not terribly surprising, particularly when considering how the rapid advances in mobile technology have made 'working from anywhere' a possibility and reality for so many of us, also raise some important issues for organizations or leaders that are supporting or offering telework to their teams. Namely, any telework program that promises or at least suggests the promise of how telework will be a simple 'shift' of work from one location to another is an outcome that is unlikely at best and misleading at worst.
A more honest and realistic approach and pitch to telework is one that more of less frames it as 'This job carries high demands and expectations AND we know you have a busy life outside of work too,' Here's how telework fits - that 'extra' 5 or 10 or 20 hours we need from you? Take them as and when you need them - the office, your house, at Starbucks -whatever.'
And the thing of it is - when framed in that manner, telework stops sounding much like telework and more like just plain old 'work.'
Here's the last observation I have about telework, and this is largely from my personal experience - the irony of telework is people at work think you are more or less free to 'work' all the time or at any time, while your family and friends at home see you working from home and think you are 'free' all the time.
What do you think - has telework simply become 'work more from home in your previously free time?'
Reader Comments (4)
The challenge with looking at a 'study' as a stand alone is that it is such a narrow focus. The claim that telework simply becomes a way of adding hours only makes sense if you believe that the program (telework) creates the problem. It doesn't. The humans managing the program must actually manage it. When we look at any program or device or anything else as being the cause of a problem we miss the actual cause-us, the people-programs and devices are things we create and can manage. If we decide to be accountable and responsible :)
I agree in that you can probably find data to back up any position, belief, or claim that you wish to promote, and in such, it probably is not always wise to rely too much on only one POV. But I do think you can use your best judgement about the source, methods, size, reputation etc. to at least make a reasonable conclusion about any one study's validity. Sure, any workplace program is going to be impacted by the actual individual people managing that program. But the main conclusions of this study, that telework programs generally mean 'more-work' largely agrees with what I have seen in my experience too, and that is why I wrote about it. And one last thing, that might not actually be a bad outcome. If the job is really a 60 hour job, and via telework a person can at least shift some of those 60 hours to time and place that helps them with other parts of their life, then that is probably a good outcome as well. Thanks very much for reading!
Telework is simply a bleeding of two lives, your work and home life. I think it comes down to whether you choose (or your employer wants) these two theoretically separate lives to converge. There are pro's and con's to keeping these two separate or merging the two. Employers and employees need to have all of the facts (some of which are contained in this report) so that they can make conscious choices given their unique situation.
@Ed - Totally agree.