Teleworking

A discussion of work habits at Catallaxy, by Jason Soon, discusses teleworking or what is also called telecommuting.
This interests me. In my own line of work as an academic, I encounter
very productive academics who are rather seldom at work. Apart from
giving classes and providing consultation advice to students, they work
mainly at home or in libraries and communicate with colleagues by email
or - indeed - over a beer in a pub or on a blogsite. They often deliver
high-quality research, get consistently good teaching evaluations and
meet mainly, for seminars and for the occasional (often resented)
administrative discussion. They are instances of the maxim that, provided people don’t have incentives to shirk, work is something they have to do, not something they must travel to. Academics often don't want to shirk because (i) they enjoy their work, and therefore don't face self-control problems, and, (ii) they are, in any event, appraised regularly on teaching and research outcomes.

Successful
teleworking programmes require incentives based on outputs rather than
the close scrutiny of individual employees. Successful design of incentive contracts
can support more liberal and attractive work relationships of this
type. This is most feasible for work activities not involving teamwork or, if teams are necessary, when they are small enough not to involve significant free-rider issues. Then meetings can be arranged as needed and, otherwise, people are left to do their own thing.

The
benefits of telework are clear. Employees improve their work-life and
work-family balances, save commuting time and reduce
congestion/pollution emissions. They also get flexibility in working
hours and arrangements. There are specific benefits for older and
disabled workers, for those with care responsibilities and those living
in rural and regional areas. The Australian Telework Advisory Committee
(ATAC) sees telework as a good deal that can improve productivity – but
it is unclear to me how much of the suggested benefits are due to the
teleworking per se or to the incentive contracts that
presumably go with it. The ATAC report does not seem to link the scope
for teleworking to the contracting issues mentioned above.

By the
way, uptake of telework in Australia is significant among small-medium
enterprises. ATAC claim 34% of SMEs and 30% of all SME workers sometimes
telework. In the US the figures are also very high particularly in the
form of homesourcing.
In 1997 about 11 million US employees worked from home while in 2004
the figure is 23.5 million or 16% of the American labour force. The firm
Jetblue , for example,
has 400 agents working at home taking air travel reservations. Many of
these employees are stay-at-home mothers. Jetblue saw their employment
as a substitute for operating call centres in India. They claim
homesourcing yield higher productivity. See the discussion in Thomas
Fiedman, The World is Flat, Chapter 1.