Teleworking refers to the type of work arrangements in which the employer or the employee works on an off-site location instead of commuting to the conventional office location. Telework can also be referred to as telecommuting because the work is done outside the primary office location. However, a situation in which employees take work home cannot be regarded as teleworking. There are various effects of teleworking, especially in the public sector workforce as we shall see in the paper. The public sector benefits in different ways from teleworking. The employees usually work from their homes, academic institutions, or near industry. These environments provide an ideal chance of collaboration across the various sectors. Another benefit of teleworking in the public sector is that the employees who do not want to commute gain work-life benefit. The employees can also respond promptly in times of crisis when the government buildings are inaccessible.
The current workforce comprises millennials who are always challenging the status quo in the intelligence community workplaces. These millennials have disrupted the long-standing education, hiring, recruiting as well as other workplace practices. Unlike the preceding generations, millennials demand more access to technology, the ability to work remotely, and more flexibility in the working hours. Because of these factors, the millennials are willing to decline job offers or even quit the job if these jobs do not provide the above factors. The federal government has capitalized on teleworking so that work duties can be conducted even outside the agency facilities. In this case, teleworking is the driver of policy creation, training implementation, as well as the development of necessary tools for the activities in the public sector.
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Literature Review
Different studies have been conducted to show the effects of telework on the public sector workforce. These studies demonstrate return on investment for transforming the public sector into a flexible workforce. The studies also show best practices regarding investment costs, measures of effectiveness, as well as the various lessons learnt. According to the 2010 Telework Enhancement Act, teleworking is a flexible working arrangement between the management and the employee in which the employee is permitted to conduct work responsibilities as well as duties assigned to him /her from an approved work station other than the conventional work station ("Telework.gov," 2019). While most researchers consider teleworking as same as telecommuting, some researchers have developed a definition proving the thin line between the two terms. According to them, teleworking and telecommuting can be distinguished based on whether the arrangement reduces commuting. This, therefore, means that the employees not commuting to work station are telecommuters while the teleworkers are those employees who return from office and carry on their work at their homes. Other researchers, however, refer to teleworking as the telecommuting subset.
According to Analytics (2019), the Global Workplace Analytics website 2016 estimated that there were about 20% to 25% of employees working as teleworkers in 2016. According to the 2016 Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2015, 24 % of the employees carried some of their work to home where they did it ("2016 Home: The Economics Daily: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics", 2019). According to Global Workplace Analytics, 80% to 90% of the employees in the United States have a desire for teleworking on a part-time basis to balance their collaborative as well as independent work responsibilities.
U.S. Government Accountability Office published a federal telework report showing that although the Office of Personnel Management collects annual data about teleworking across agencies, substantial declines existed when reporting the cost savings of telework from 2012 to 2013. The U.S. Government Accountability Office established that the guidance provided by the Office of Personnel Management to agencies proving the validity of their telework programs was erroneous. This is because the guidance lacked information regarding the way agencies can utilize the available efforts of data collection to identify costs as well as benefits of the programs.
According to Office (2019), the popular benefits of teleworking are reduced employee absenteeism positive impact on the enironment, reduced utilities, reduced costs of real estate, increased productivity reduced transit subsidies/ commuting costs, ensuring continuity of operations especially during inclement weather or other designated emergencies. Nilles and colleagues proposed a cost and benefits framework in 1976. Several studies have been conducted summarizing the costs as well as benefits of teleworking based on the framework. The framework hypothesizes benefits and costs at three levels: the environment, the employer, and the employee. Some workers do not realize the benefits of teleworking and prefer to commute to the central office. The factors making them prefer working from the office instead of teleworking are the barriers to telework. These factors include the ability to separate home life and work, chance to collaborate with supervisors as well as coworkers on a face-to-face basis. In some cases, the management may reject teleworking. In 2015, a survey on the scientific literature on telework was conducted with more than 200 citations for telework from communication & technology, transportation, management, and psychology. The results of the study were, however, conflicting.
Benefits of Telework on Employees
It usually takes time to commute from places of residence to workplaces. The matter is even worse when the weather conditions are not the desired type or when there is traffic congestion. With teleworking, however, the employees are cushioned from these hurdles since they can handle their assigned tasks while at their homes. This means that the employees can save time, energy as well as the money that would have been used commuting. According to studies done on the costs as well as benefits of teleworking on employees, employees who engaged continuously in teleworking reported higher job satisfaction compared to those who rarely teleworked or never teleworked totally (Caillier, 2012). According to social scientists, the employees may have portrayed greater autonomy because of the flexibility experienced with the ability to balance home life and work.
Costs of Telework on Employees
The employees may be compelled to incur high costs when setting up telecommunication infrastructure in their homes. Some employees may decide to have dual use of home infrastructure as well as computers. In this case, the same computers used for personal business are used to telework. When this is the case, the employee poses a data security risk to the employer. The employees engaging in teleworking are likely to suffer from social as well as professional isolation. The professional isolation may make the employee be out of mind because of being out of sight. The social isolation denies the employees teleworking a chance to have an informal interaction with their colleagues.
Benefits of Telework on Employers
Teleworking is crucial for the employers as it helps them reduce estate as well as other overhead costs. Although the employers benefit from reduced operational cost, the savings realized vary depending on how the employer uses the teleworking arrangements to reduce the parking space as well as the number of clerical desks required. The employers also benefit from increased output and productivity because of teleworking. The increased productivity may result from a combination of factors such as a greater focus on performance, more time spent working, a suitable environment for concentrating on the task at hand and reduced interruptions. According to Caillier (2011), various studies have been conducted on the time spent between teleworking and non-teleworking employees with their employers. The results of the studies confirmed that teleworking employees stay for a more extended time with their employers compared with non-teleworking employees. According to the 2016 report by GAO, implementation of teleworking was the reason for improved retention as well as recruitment of employees in particular public sector workforce.
Cost of Telework on Employers
Employers need to install the required IT as well as infrastructure so that they can initiate a teleworking program. They also need to cater for the management of the telework program as well as the training required to operate the program. All these costs may be high, especially based on the organizational size. The employers are also at high risk of losing proprietary secrets as well as other crucial information. In instances where the telework infrastructure gives access to additional entry points for the data hackers, the employer suffers the associated direct costs. The employers may incur indirect cost in terms of losing knowledge sharing between employees. This is particular in terms of loss of mentors. When there are high chances of teleworking among the senior employees, loss of innovation may be experienced.
Benefits of Telework on the Environment
Benefits of teleworking are not only restricted to employers and employers as the environment is also a beneficiary of the same. According to original studies done on the effects of teleworking on the environment, it was assumed that telecommuting would reduce the number of passenger vehicle miles and thus less carbon emission. However, according to Choo, Mokhtarian, & Salomon (2005), there were weak effects from the studies because the telecommuters would use the same fuel as well as vehicles in making trips. The employers used to combine such trips with commuting time before they became telecommuters. Costs of Telework on the Environment were not included or considered in the various studies done since the researchers did not find data on these costs.
On December 9, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 into law. The legislation was a critical milestone as far as teleworking is concerned. The law specifies the expectations, responsibilities as well as roles of all the agencies, especially the Federal executive agencies in matters relating to teleworking policies. Consequently, the OPM issued executive agencies with telework manuals suggesting that all the employees were entitled to telework provided that their jobs did not require their physical availability.
Methodology
In an attempt to have an insight into how various agencies have transformed because of the inherent business practices when implementing telework, seven federal agencies were selected based on several factors. These factors included a broadly accepted telework program, overtly available data on the telework program and duty for managing sensitive data. Publicly available information was used to understand the reason every agency had a distinct telework program, the way each agency implemented it program lesson learned from experiences of each agency as well as the ROI or investment cost reported from the telework. The research was initiated with the OPM annual telework report so that agencies with active telework programs could be identified. After identifying these agencies, further processing was done to come up with agencies handling sensitive information and those having a significant number of teleworkers. The final steps were researching on the agencies that reported data publicly so that the analysis could be comprehensive. The agencies sought were those possessing active telework programs as well as those that could release publicly available information on the benefits as well as the costs for their programs in terms of technology, human capital metrics, finances, value to the customer as well as the mission impact. An evaluation was done for performance measures data demonstrating the ROI in the respective agencies for changes aimed at implementing the respective agency telework programs. Much focus was laid in considering the attributes of effective telework programs across the financial, policy, legal as well as the technological categories. For each category, a critical analysis was done for the attributes making a telework program effective.
Results
Under the technological attributes category, it was established that agencies that focused on securing their unclassified networks had an excellent opportunity to boost the number of positions eligible for teleworking. In the category of legal attributes, it was established that the agencies that complied with TEA were able to implement telework programs well compared to those with compliance issues. Because of the effective policy implementation, adequate training of both managers, as well as employees, was recorded. There was also proficient management performance as well as a generally high percentage of eligible teleworkers. In the category of financial attributes, the agencies that were able to execute telework successively had high ROIs as well as reduced costs.
The agencies that were successful in implementing telework programs benefited from reduced employee absenteeism, positive impact on the environment, reduced utilities, reduced costs of real estate, increased productivity reduced transit subsidies/ commuting costs, ensuring continuity of operations especially during inclement weather or other designated emergencies. Teleworking also exhibited negative effects such as high costs of setting up telecommunication infrastructure. Because of the high costs, some employees resulted in using the same home infrastructure as well as computers for office work. When the same computers were used for personal business and teleworking, the risk of data security arose. In some cases the employees engaging in teleworking suffered from social as well as professional isolation making them to be out of mind because of being out of sight and lack of informal interaction with the colleagues due to the social isolation.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The drivers of teleworking programs are the generation born from the 21st Century or commonly regarded as the millennials. This generation has continuously challenged the status quo in intelligence community workplaces, therefore, disrupting the long-standing education, hiring, recruiting as well as other workplace practices. Unlike the preceding generations, millennials have been demanding more access to technology, the ability to work remotely, and more flexibility in the working hours. Because of these factors, the millennials are willing to decline job offers or even quit the job if these jobs do not provide the above factors.
Although the definition of telework in academic literature is not concise, there are specific guidelines as well as specific meaning associated with it in the United States government. According to the federal definition of teleworking, the employees do not only need to work remotely but instead, have approved working site. The number of employees aspiring to telework is continually growing because of the desire to have flexibility in the work schedule. The government needs to acknowledge these dynamics and therefore consider teleworking capabilities as an essential component of operations. Due to the high desire of teleworking and the benefits that arise with a successfully implemented telework program, some agencies are even going for remote work arrangements more flexible compared to telework. Most of these agencies are doing so without requiring an approved work site. From the conducted study, agencies interested in modifying an existing telework program or implementing a new program altogether need to have a clear insight into the goal of such a program. By sharing the best practices across various agencies and particularly federal agencies, the agencies gain valuable information about chances of improving the existing telework programs. Based on the findings from the study the following recommendations are made.
The first recommendation is that there should be established program goals, clearly explaining the mission value of telework. These goals should also be communicated to the work-force. From the agencies examined had set goals of being more responsive to the public, especially in times of emergency, improving employee job satisfaction and reducing real estate costs. The second recommendation is that there should be a clear communication of the job positions eligible for telework. When the data in an agency require special handling because of its sensitivity, the employees should be made aware of the different ways to work remotely as well as the required security protocols. This is because providing adequate training as well as establishing clear policies that are critical when implementing parameters set by agency leaders.
The third recommendation is that there should be policies documenting the use of personal as well as government computing devices, how to handle data, as well as the general implementation of telework. Managers and employees should understand what is expected of the teleworking supervisor and employee, how to engage in telework effectively, and whether the telework can be accepted at the agency. The last recommendation is that there should be performance measures established from the teleworkers as well as the agencies. The agencies should evaluate the viability of the telework program in relation to the set goals. For the managers and employees, performance measures may consider quantifiable metrics or results-oriented management approaches for performance.
References
2016 Home : The Economics Daily : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/home.htm?view_full
Analytics, G. (2019). Latest Telecommuting Statistics – Global Workplace Analytics. Retrieved from https://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics
Caillier, J. (2011). Are Teleworkers Less Likely to Report Leave Intentions in the United States Federal Government Than Non-teleworkers Are?. The American Review Of Public Administration , 43 (1), 72-88. doi: 10.1177/0275074011425084
Caillier, J. (2012). Satisfaction With Work-Life Benefits and Organizational Commitment/Job Involvement. Review Of Public Personnel Administration , 33 (4), 340-364. doi: 10.1177/0734371x12443266
Choo, S., Mokhtarian, P.L. & Salomon, I. Transportation (2005) 32: 37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-004-3046-7
Office, U. (2019). Federal Telework: Better Guidance Could Help Agencies Calculate Benefits and Costs. Retrieved from https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-551
Telework.gov. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.telework.gov/guidance-legislation/telework- legislation/telework-enhancement-act/
