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.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
RSS