Challenges to Managers with Telecommuting

Challenges to managers with Telecommuting:

The organizational advantages of telecommuting thus cover a wide spectrum, including behavioural outcomes, productivity, and legal issues. But on another the side there are several challenges which an organization may suffer during its attempt to adopt telecommuting in the place of traditional office environment. According to (Kurkland & Bailey 1999) the major challenge face by the managers Is their inability to physically observe their employees performance . If a manager can't see her subordinates in action, then she can't note where the employee is struggling and where he is strong, and may not be able to provide reliable and constructive performance feedback. We also argue that a level of social interaction is essential in most of the jobs as (Cascio 2000)in the absence of workers feel isolated and out of the loop with respect to crucial communications and contact with decision makers who can make or break their careers.(Robbins et al. 2016) also states that absence of the employees from their desk and meetings or those does not contribute in the day to day informal workplace interactions may risk their chance of getting a pay rise or promotion.

Furthermore, telecommuting can negatively affect the social network in the workplace and may possess challenges for manager. Telecommuting may negatively impact those who remain in the workplace (i.e., non-telecommuters) by (1) disrupting teamwork, (2) fragmenting the local social network [of those left behind], and (3) creating possible resentment among employees NOT chosen to telecommute. For example, in one case, a telecommuter complained that because he lived next to a golf course, his colleagues teased that when he worked at home, he had gone "tele-golfing." Other entities may also face challenges in dealing with telecommuting. Unions, for example, fear that telecommuting may adversely affect worker solidarity because telecommuters are more physically dispersed and less able to organize collectively. Additionally, managers may find it difficult to create team synergy and to overcome the absence of informal, interactive learning, learning that takes place by the water cooler, over lunch, or in the hallways. On the challenge to synergy, (Hertel, Geister & Konradt 2005) states that Productivity gains are measured when you put people into an office environment and a lot of synergy's created but When people telecommute there's a lack of energy noticed in the office. Whereas, on the challenge to informal, interactive learning (Kurkland & Bailey 1999) states It's much more difficult to communicate with the telecommuter as most communication here tends to be informal communication, not meetings, not memos, or things like that. We find that telecommuter is probably the least in touch with the general things that are going on in the division in terms of product ideas, concepts. he can make it for a formal presentation but those don't happen very often compared to work getting done as people just run into folks, have lunch with folks, and that kind of thing." (Kurkland & Bailey 1999)affirmed that participating in formal, scheduled meetings is not enough. When employees work off-site, they miss the learning that occurs, informally, spontaneously--learning that cannot be scheduled, and is sometimes known as "in place career development."

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