Twenty five years ago, one of the unending traffic snarls in Los Angeles prompted Jack Nilles to suggest that telecommuting (a term he coined from the British word teleworking) be a solution to the traffic problems in America. This is now identified as one of the trends that is set to grow and dominate the world of work today. Telecommuting or the alternatively used term called `telework', utilizes the flexibility offered by the communication technology to get work done from a place other than the conventional office settings.
Imagine a typical workday in most of our lives today ... the day starts with a hectic couple of hours at home followed by making a beeline to the office in an endeavor to report on time. The morning traffic is busy with people traveling to work by different modes of transport. The picture is worse for city dwellers, who have to allocate the travel time in terms of distance, waiting for transport, traffic jams, unruly traffic, in addition to the fact that the person also has to plan his/her other requirements like food, child care, and many more. Like it or not, the fact is that we are all leading work-centered lives today. The increasingly leaner organizations also mean that more and more work needs to be managed by fewer numbers of people. The number of man-hours spent on a typical workday has steadily increased to an extent where the work routine dominates all other activities in a person's life. Telework and telecommuting are today used interchangeably to reflect the changing practices of organizations-the emphasis is on allocating and getting the work done satisfactorily rather than insisting on the physical presence of the employees at the office premises. This saves on the time spent on the daily commute and also accords the employees the flexibility to work from geographically dispersed locations. Four types of telework have been identified in research
hile home-based telework requires a workstation installed in the houses of people, satellites offices are `bare bones' kind of offices set up by the companies in suburbs or localities that are closer home to a group of people. Neighborhood work center on the other hand is an interesting concept. They are shared office space where the employees of several companies share the physical infrastructure. So, a single office space houses the activities of many company employees who live in that neighborhood and stay connected to their respective organizations while at work. High-speed connectivity with the central offices ensures seamless integration of work. |
