The Benefits and Challenges of Tele-Working

Question:

Describe the Tele working and its challenges to the organisations and the Tele-workers and also identify the potential benefits as well as challenges of Tele-Working in organisation?

According to Baard and Thomas (2010), Tele-Working is one of the major regular working processes from one place rather than office. Tele-working allows the worker in working work from home rather than goes to the office. NBN will be the met enabler of Tele-work for creating the high definition interactive between Tele-worker locations and traditional workplace. The government of Australia firmly focus in improving the Tele-work system and integrate Tele-working process as a part of the National Digital Economy Strategy. According to government of Australia, they aim in holding the top position in digital economies in the entire world. Australian government tries to double their Tele-Working level within 2020. However, Australian Government said that they try to employ 12 percent worker in Tele-Working arrangement.

Calder and Watkins (2012) opined that Tele-Working delivers wide range of benefits for the country, employers as well as individuals. As the external environment of business, high increased therefore Information and Communication Technology (ICT) become complex in business process. This study will try to employ the Tele-Working process in order to sustainable development of organisations. This study will firmly focus in demonstrating the benefits as well as challenges of Tele-Working within an organisation in business sectors. The selected company for this organisation is Atlassian.

Atlassian mainly provides the software support to their client and track the IT system from one place rather than goes to the office daily. The software team of Atlassian including developers, document writers, bug-bashers and developers are the main heroes. The company provides services and track the system from one place over internet. Thus, Atlassian allows their client in creating better software and management process and help in work smarter. The company has wide range of customer over 3500 and majority of consumers are the biggest brands in this world such as ebay, hulu, liknedin twitter, Facebook, adobe, zynga, Netflix, etc. The company allows people in getting job with their five continent offices and awesome products along with score of hiring benefits and friendly consumer. Atlassian provides the framework of collaboration with the large community via developer network. However, the company and the team members of Atlassian give their best effort in developing as well as providing service to customers (Aatlassian.com, 2015). Apart from that, Atlassian is also known for fun in the IT support and solution providing industry. Moreover, in order to provide support and answering the question of customers frequently, Atlassian developed Shiplt Day within 24 hours. It was the great innovation of Atlassian.            

Lui et al. (2012) argued that Tele-working is able to change the nature of labour force in workplace of an organisation. After adopting Tele-Working system, Atlassian is able to attain wider opportunities in running their business into flexible way better rather than the traditional way. It has been identified that 70 percent employees in Australia intend to work remotely instead of working from office. As argued by Miyagi and Ishiguro (2009) in order to develop the sustainability, organisation has to create workplace diversity. However, Tele-Working system is able to develop as well as increase workplace activity via participating with the all employees through Tele-work. Moreover, adopting Tele-Working Atlassian can improve their employee’s skills and viewpoints.

Atlassian: A Case Study on Tele-Working

However, Tele-Working has great challenges in organisation perspective such as employee feels uncomfortable and isolated because informal communication cannot support socially, High turnover, levels of comfort and commitment are the major isolation of employee in terms of Tele-Working. Ozcelik (2010) depicted that lack of supervisor and support from the top level management or organisational support can highly created employee turnover that ay stooped the Tele-Working. However, Tele-Working may satisfy employees based on job but unable to growth the employees from an organisational viewpoints (Telework.gov.au, 2015). Moreover, Raiborn, C. and Butler (2009) acknowledge that there are several media such as email, Facebook, Skype, LinkedIn, etc that assist companies in making frequent interaction with their Tele-Worker and provide feeling of social support. However, following factors help in identifying the potential benefits as well as challenges of Tele-Working in organisation –

Social Factors: Social Factors allows in identifying the motivational factors intersect in terms of Tele-Work situation and return to work. Tele-Working plays the potential role in an organisation such as

Work Rhythms and Working Time – Greater degree of control provided by the Tele-Working to workers that generates a positive outcomes such as employees return to work for the companies.

Career Certainty – There are many employees though that work from home means low growth in career. However, Tele-Working concerns employees about their career development via making frequent connection according the situation of an office.

Motivation – There are several reason such as conflict demand, working rhythms, etc. that makes difficult the employee motivation for organisation. Ruh et al. (2011) cited that working role in society of Tele-Working provides the meaningful work to employees that assist in providing the positive way employee motivation.

Economical Factors: Tele-Working has potential influence in business economics. It creates the new opportunities for business such as reduce overheads (property fees), increase reactivity of firms by improving skills and restructuring the business, allocate the business activities with much closer to market, maintain local employment, etc. Apart from that, Tele-work allows the business in targeting market with better way from the point of view of economics. It has been identified that Tele-Working system increased the 20 percent working activity of an employee. Therefore, introducing Tele-Working system, Atlassian is able to increased productivity. Most important factors of Tele-Working s that company can fixed their transform cost in respect to outsourcing activates.  

Ethical Factors: Ethics is the key concept in business and log term sustainability. However, several philosophies provide the framework of ethical decision that relates to the values of society. The ethics of Tele-working activities develop based on the code ACS code of conduct. It maintains the dedication of employment corporate behaviour and managerial requirements of business. Tele-Working employment gives the job description with details and monitoring working activity of employees that assist in feeling comfort to employee just like office environment.

Legal Factors: Tele-Working is the bearing of state legislation and commonwealth. Thus, company can improve their flexibility in greater way. Work from home allowed the employee in maintaining their daily schedule and save the transportation time. It helps in improving their productivity that increases the working activities for Atlassian. Apart from that, national compliance and enforcement policy involves within the process of Tele-Working. It helps organisation in regulating health and safety that enforces the WHS of Atlassian.  

Potential Benefits of Tele-Working: Social and Economic Factors

According to Bonsall and Shires (2008) the main reason for the growth of the Tele-working within the companies especially within the global companies are it helps in developing the sustainable working environment. The main reason for the stressing on the development of the Tele-working environment is that it helps to create such an environment that protects the environment. According to Khunlertkit and Carayon (2013) the implementation of the carbon credit policy has motivated the companies to implement the Tele-working culture. However, Salerno et al. (2013) warned that without having a clear framework if the companies opts for the Tele-working framework it could adverse effect on the profitability of the business.  

According to Reynolds et al. (2011) the Tele-working is having two different aspects on is the company aspect and the other one is the employees’ aspects. Therefore, the critical analysis for the Tele-working should be done from the company and the employees’ angel.

Criticism from the company angel

According to Sotiriades et al. (2004) in recent times most of the companies are trying to develop such an operational framework that will minimize the operational cost over the time. This can be achieved through implementing the Tele-working environment within the company. However, the major problem that the most of the companies have faced during the implementation of the system is the higher initial investment in the infrastructural development.

However, according to Khunlertkit and Carayon (2013) the Tele-working environment helps in the increment of the employees through providing an uninterrupted working environment. Through Salerno et al. (2013) pointed out that as the entire working environment becomes more of a virtual environment kind therefore it becomes very much difficult to monitor the individual performances.

The study by Reynolds et al. (2011) reflects that the Tele-working environment works as a tool for the intrinsic motivation. According to this study, it has been observed that the Tele-working environment helps in keeping the work related stress down and therefore the company remains able to extract higher performance from the employees. However, the study by Khunlertkit and Carayon (2013) contradicted the view though stating that it is true in some cases the company remained able to increase the performances in short time but the working over the Tele-network increases the risk of data security.

According to Reynolds et al. (2011) through the implementation of the Tele-working environment, the company often remains able to decrease the retention rate through providing the flexible working hours. However Salerno et al. (2013) stated that the flexible working hour is possible only when the industry is related with the service industry only it cannot be implemented in all other industry areas.

Criticism from the Employee angel

On the employees point according to the study by Khunlertkit and Carayon (2013) the major problem what the employees faces that after sometimes they feels isolation from the company. However, Reynolds et al. (2011) have produced a complete different view through providing the working option the company provide extrinsic motivation to the employees. According to the study by Khunlertkit and Carayon (2013) the main advantage what the employees receives through working in a Tele-working environment is it allows the employee to spend quality time within the family. However Salerno et al. (2013) stated that this quality time is not sustainable because of the increasing profit centric movements from the companies. 

Conclusion

This report outlined the activity of Tele-Working for an organisation. However, in order to critically reviewed, analyst selected an organisation named Atlassian that provide IT support and solution to other companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ebay, etc. There are major However, the company can faced limited benefit through implement or introducing Tele-Working activity within their business process. There are wide ranges of risk present that decrease the market value of Atlassian and increase employee turnover. From the point of view of Atlassian business, Tele-Workers are the key people in terms of delivering software solutions of the customers. The company has to use different Tele-Working methodologies such as video chat such as Skype, voice technologies such as mobile phone and text messaging, etc. Following are the lost of challenges that faced by the Tele-workers such as trust, visibility, team intimacy, envy, effectiveness and life balance.

Trust: Trust s the key concept of sustainability development and future growth of the company. Without face-to-face communication company in business, sector unable to build trust of their employee. Lack of face-to-face interaction for prolonged period is not unable to build trust.

Visibility: Visibility is also a great challenge for Tele-Working from the viewpoint of Tele-workers. If the worker present in the office workplace, they are able to understand the specialization of the company. However, Tele-Workers have less specialized skill set instead of the other team members of the company.

Work: It has been potentially identified that Tele-Workers find very complexity in order to draw the clear lines b4tween the professional and personal lives. It is also identified that Tele-Workers try to overproduce in terms of showing the effectiveness and worth. Apart from that, it is also identified that most of the tele-workers tempted to work in comparison to their team members for the time zone of office workplace. These tendencies are blurring the line between personal and professional life and lead to longer hour in computer.  

Effectiveness: Tele-Worker works from home that means that there was absence of common office distractions and commute time. These are the reason that decreases the productivity of Tele-workers in comparison to collocated colleague. However, this may create low visibility and trust between the employees and employers. However, building of low trust can increase the employee turnover. However, organisation has to involve open communication channels through which their Tele-Worker provides continuous feedback and keep in touch with the office. It will help in increasing effectiveness.    

Telework is facing a range of challenges which is inhibiting its introduction. The inhibitory factors are reducing the enthusiasm among the employees of the organization to introduce telework. However in order to overcome the challenges regarding introduction of telework , the following recommendations can be provided.

Technical feasibility – One of the major concern affecting the implementation of telework is technical feasibility. The business has to be patient to overcome the problem. The business will not be able to overcome the problem in short term basis. Innovation can solve the problems related to technical feasibility and increase the scope of telework. The uncertainty technically can be removed by the roll out of NBN in future. Optimal telework can be provided by using covering fiber, satellites and fixed wireless. It will support high speed and a reliable telework. The efforts to increase the speed of the internet by using fixed, satellite and wireless mobile networks have been the most reliable options. They have never been designed for broad bands.

Trust of the employees – There is lack of support from the employees towards the introduction of telework. According to the employees, the introduction of telework will reduce the ability of the employees to work hard as they will not be under constant visual supervision. They might face various distractions at home which might inhibit their work flow. The concerns of the supervisors regarding the various distractions at home can be overcome by ensuring that the employee s will work with same level of motivation as they work in office and the level of distraction at home will be minimized. The performance of the staff members will be monitored by new measures. There are various organizations that support telework. For example Telework Australia promotes telework.

A separate arrangement for home office has been made from which the employees can work. This will minimize the distraction of the workers. The physical separations will be between the worker and the various diversions at workplace. The various distractions at home are television or the members from the family. But a separate home office will create a barrier between the various distractions. The staff can be monitored remotely by adopting various strategies to monitor the employees. The employees can be monitored by the amount of time spent by the staff members at the desk of the home office. The performance of the employees will be monitored rather than the amount of hours that has been worked by the employees. This will provide better information to the supervisory team. The employees can communicate with the supervisors or the colleagues live by using Skype. Skype will serve as a medium for face to face interaction between the employee and the supervisor.

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