Ever since telecommuting became a viable option for a broad spectrum of workers, some companies have offered it as a tempting perk. Why not make workers happier by allowing them to spend more time with their families, avoid long commutes and exert more control over their schedules? Plus, off-site work enables businesses to save money on real estate and hire talented people who live in far-flung locations.
If managers have had doubts about telecommuting, they have centered on whether people working from home would be as productive as they are in the office and if some form of monitoring is necessary, George Mason University associate professor Kevin Rockmann said.
However, new research by Rockmann and Boston College professor Michael Pratt suggests that concerns about off-site work should be turned in an entirely different direction — toward the people who remain in the office. The professors’ work appears in a recent edition of the Academy of Management Discoveries.
Photo: AP
In a study of a Fortune 100 company in Silicon Valley that freely allowed off-site work, the researchers found that the employees who chose to continue working in the office ended up feeling lonely and disconnected. Many of these people came into work because they desired social interaction and yet they found themselves deprived of the convivial lunches, spontaneous hallway interactions and impromptu office conversations that can be so energizing.
“The office essentially became this isolated wasteland,” Rockmann said in an interview.
According to his study, the decision to work from home became contagious, extending beyond the people who chose it because they truly wanted or needed the flexibility. In short, more people started working from home because everyone else was doing it, so the office became even more desolate than it already was.
One manager said: “In some ways, teamwork no longer existed” at the company after the more flexible policy was enacted.
It is true that communication technology such as e-mails, instant messaging and Skype can make up for a lack of physical connectedness, Rockmann said, agreeing that a consistent form of communication across a team is especially important.
However, interacting in the same physical space builds a level of depth and trust that simply is not available with other methods, he said, partly because people are better able to pick up on nonverbal behavior.
Yahoo endured criticism when it curtailed its work-from-home policy in 2013, saying that being physically present in the office was a key element of communication and collaboration. As the research by Rockmann and Pratt indicates, the company might have had a point.
Yahoo’s experience “shows that we have only begun to scratch the surface of the far-reaching effects of allowing workers to work outside the office,” according to the study.
The study is not meant to be a wholesale condemnation of telecommuting, which, after all, has made a sizable contribution to work-life balance, Rockmann said.
Rather, it is a call for companies to consider its effect not just on the people who work from home but on the whole team, he said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary