So there’s a new study that’s been circulating widely lately that looks at the impact of telecommuting on those workers who remain in the office. I’ve seen dozens of news articles and blogs with titles such as “Telcommuting May Harm Workers”, etc. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and felt I had to speak up.

After digging around a little I found an article that seems to have put some effort into covering the full story and providing the full set of facts: “Telecommuting May Harm Workers Left Behind in the Office” on Yahoo News.  The points are basically that people who work in the office but have a lot of telecommuting coworkers are less satisfied in the job. The belief for the reasons are twofold:

1. People build less strong, less meaningful relationships with their virtually-present coworkers.
2. People may feel that they have less flexibility and more work than their virtually-present coworkers.

I can see how these could be an issue. However, I believe people who have these experiences are suffering because the company itself has probably not thought through their telecommuting program carefully. Just like for all other benefits that an employee receives, the telecommuting benefit needs to be a program offered across the board with consistent rules for all. If some managers let their employees telecommute and others whose staff have very similar roles and functions don’t, this can definitely cause resentment and damage relationships. Of course, other factors such as performance may dictate which employees a manager allows to telecommute but the general rules and approach must be consistent.

Upper management needs to have policies in place about telecommuting just like they do for other employee benefits, and then provide tools and training for both the telecommuting and the non-telecommuting workers to make sure the interactions, communications and relationship-building opportunities are addressed and that the visibility of productivity (probably the cause of item #2) remains high.

I think many people believe telecommuting is something you can just ‘do’. But there are skills to learn and behaviors to modify for you, and your company, to be successful in telecommuting arrangements.

Technorati Tags: telecommuting, virtual presence, employee satisfaction, employee benefits