Peer Review Assignment

WORKING FROM HOME HAS ITS ADVANTAGES

DAVID MAINOR

PROFESSOR STEVEN WEBBER

RESEARCH AND WRITING ENG 215

FEBRUARY 6, 2017

Abstract

The demands for competitive companies to meet their bottom line has become the major focal point in the modern day business world. Employee’s consistently work extremely hard trying to meet these objectives while attempting to balance their personal lives. In this paper I will attempt to identify the advantages of working from home and how it improves commitment, drive, and loyalty to the company’s bottom line. I will challenge the way the workforce traditionally thinks and provide examples to support the advantages.

Introduction

The term that defines the ability to work from home is technically referred as telecommuting. In its infancy telecommuting was developed as a technology project conducted by Jack Niles ( a consulting rocket scientist to the US Air Force Space program at the time) over a two year period that in 1973 and 1974. During that time he was able to coin the phrase “Telecommuting” but there was some skepticism from the federal government which delayed the public outcry for telework to happen. It was not until Frank Schiff published an article in the Washington post in 1979 that the Federal Government took a serious look at flexible work schedules and the term “Flexiplace” was established. Ultimately the total concept of telemarketing was not implemented into full use until President George H. W. Bush signed the amendment to the clean air act of 1970 in 1990. Thus the National Telework Initiative was fulfilled and the government has since been using this concept throughout the various agencies to present date. The concept is in use throughout the private sector as well by fortune 500 companies such as Apple, Amazon, American Express and Wells Fargo to name a few . The wave is still growing and in a technological world where time and efficiency go hand and hand with the bottom line there is no doubt that the potential for growth far out ways its adversaries.

Opponent vs. Proponents

In May of 2013 Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced that as of June of that year there would no longer be an option for telecommuting. This announcement came with questions of mis-management of time and as a result of her announcement several supporters were in agreement with her mainly based on the traditional belief that collaborate teams work better when they are interacting face to face. But is that true? Ms. Mayer used this measure as a tool to shake up her workforce in the midst of some unsettling times at Yahoo. This measure was used as a tool to motivate her employees to regain some of the marketshare lost to Yahoo’s competitors like Facebook and Google. But based on the current comparison and success of Yahoo’s competitors and I their own bottom line over the last 5 years it is safe to say that Yahoo has not closed the gap. Some statistics that prove this are on the historical stock price between 2013 to now Google is trading slightly over 800 dollars a share, Facebook is trading slightly over 130 dollars a share and Yahoo is trading slightly over 43 dollars a share and although yahoo has been around much longer part of the innovation practice of Google and Facebook are surround around have a happy workforce. Both Google and Facebook have telecommuting policies a lot their respective workforces to be flexible and it has paid off tremendously. Furthermore, there is adequate evidence that supports the idea of being happier at work contributes to spike in productivity, Take for example and an experimental study performed by Andrew Oswald< Eungeio Proto and Daniel Segrio each professors at the University of Warwick that was performed on over 700 partakers that identified the importance of the role in happiness in the workplace and their findings from the experiment showed that the individuals who played a role in the study had a 12% greater productivity rate than those in a controlled environment. Now that the correlation between happiness and productivity has been established, How does working from home make on happier? And what other advantages are to be gained from working from home?

Advantages

An immediate advantage of telecommuting is the cost saving that result to the employer and the employee. When you begin to tally the up the costs for gas, public transportation and the cost to purchase clothing for the office it equates to major savings to the employee. This coupled with the fact that parents now have the flexibility to revolve their work schedules to support a balanced work/ home environment motivates employees. One of the ways that businesses benefit from the employees ability to work from home is that the employee has the ability to continue to be productive even if they are home under the weather. Another perk that companies receive from a home scheduled employee is that there is less time at the water cooler. A home employee tends to pay closer attention to the break scheduled timeframes. This was revealed in a study by Stanford University economics professor Nick Bloom who performed a 10 month study on a company in Shanghai China called CTrip.com. CTrip is an international Flight reservations company that Bloom identifies each of these advantages. In fact the study concluded that “ Home working led to a 13% performance increase of which 9% was from working more minutes per shift based on (fewer breaks and sick-days) and 4% from more calls per minute (attributed from quieter working environment)” (Bloom, & Roberts, 2013 Working Paper No. 3109). Another advantage of working from home is the churn rate is reduced. Employer are empowered with continuity in the way they improve processes by not have to acquire new employees. Retention is made easier when the employer allows the employee to work from home and moves become less attractive to for the individual and even life changes such as moving to another state. It is also a benefit for disabled employees to work from home and an asset to the employer based on a reduction in space and furnishing requirements to meet one’s disability needs.

Conclusion

In review we first discussed the topic by identifying that working from home has its advantages and how we would establish that point. We then went on describing the history of telecommuting and provides the time frame of how telecommuting was established. We then went on to discuss the oppositions claim on why working from home doesn’t work. Next we discredited the oppositions claim by providing competitors success who take advantage of and promote telecommuting. Comparative bottom line numbers were given to support the advantages. It was then that we went into discussing additional advantages to the employee and the employer by providing specific examples of a successful global company that benefits from the use of its telecommuting workforce and the employees who approve of the option. Finally we touched on how companies can save money for telecommuting employees and how the employee has additional means to be productive and happy. So what’s next for telecommuting, the sky is the limit! We could eventually see a total workforce that has telecommuters, the best is yet to come.

References

Bloom, N., & Roberts J. (2013, March) Does working from home work Evidence from a Chinese Experiment [Electronic Version] Working Paper # 3109

Addady M. (2015, October 29) Being Happy at work really makes you more productive [Electronic Version] 1

Sgroi, D., Proto E., & Oswald A. (2015, October) Happiness and productivity: Understanding the happy-productive worker Global Perspectives Series: Paper 4

Couts, A. (2013, February 26) The Digital Self: Confessions of a Terrified Telecommuter [Electronic Version] 1

Joice, Wendell (2000, February) The Evolution of Telework in the Federal Government Office of Government Wide Policy GSA 7, 8, 17