A Utilitarian Analysis of Telecommuting

A recent decision by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to implement a ban on telecommuting -- precluding employees from working from home -- may have detrimental effects on both worker productivity and morale, according to faculty experts.

“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side,” Mayer wrote in a memo to employees. “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when [employees] work from home.”

Just three days prior to the memo’s distribution, Nicholas Bloom, professor of economics, published a study called “Does Working From Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment.” The study found that employees who worked from home enjoyed a 13 percent increase in productivity compared to their office-bound peers, and has since been extensively cited in articles contesting Mayer’s approach.

“It’s very far out there to say that no one [at all] can work at home,” Bloom said. “I can see two reasons [for the extreme action]. One [is] to ‘reset’ everything and reconnect people to the office. The second is that it’s a cheap way to downsize—to make people quit.”

I don’t know about the motivation “to make people quit,” but I can sympathize with the idea of getting people to reconnect. We have become too dependent on electronic devices in our lives – smart phones, tablet, laptops, and desktops. It seems as though few people want to talk directly with others. We vent our feelings through the impersonal world of Facebook and Twitter and say things – sometimes hurtful things – that we would not say in person and to someone’s face.

I like to analyze ethical issues using a utilitarian analysis, which calls for evaluating benefits and harms of alternative actions. Starting with the benefits, telecommuting supports alternative life-styles especially two-wage-earner families with children. The quality of life can improve through work-balance decisions and children benefit by having a parent around at times when the child would otherwise be in day care.

Telecommuting also opens up opportunities for the disabled to be more productive members of the workforce by utilizing the skills they have developed. In other words there is the human element of telecommuting that seems to be more important than the fact there is little “face time.” Face-to-face meetings still can occur when needed through advance planning.

A variety of concerns have been raised about telecommuting including the following:

• Is the home-based worker doing productive work?
• How should time worked be measured?
• How should the company establish that the home-based employee work a 30-hour week?
• Should employers inspect home offices for potential OSHA violations?

Researchers have found that while teleworkers have more flexibility to manage work and life, it also creates distractions, particularly when a home office is not clearly defined.  Experts say working from the kitchen table is not the best as distractions in the home can make it difficult to focus on work.

From a corporate culture standpoint, there are certain positions more conducive to telework, which include professional specialty type positions; executive, administrative, managerial, sales and administrative support, including clerical. The services industry employs the most telecommuters than any other industry. Teleworkers and employers both agree it takes discipline to telecommute. Tact and communications skills are important because of the loss of face-to-face contact with clients, coworkers and bosses. This is especially true with email because the intent of messages can be lost in the interpretation without the ability to see the nonverbal cues.

From an ethical viewpoint, a conclusion can be drawn that teleworking has advantages for employers and employees for the reasons stated earlier. As technology continues to improve and the need to reduce costs remains at the forefront of improved profits and earnings, more companies will begin to look for ways to implement telework programs. Companies that have succeeded use telework as a competitive advantage to recruit and retain the best talent, as a cost efficiency measure to improve profit margins, and as a cost effective way to do business. Yahoo's policy may be bucking a trend in this regard and it might cost them good employees in the long run.

Public-sector agencies, like their counterparts in the private sector, are embracing the idea of telework. President Barack Obama signed the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, which required Federal agencies to improve their use of telework as a strategic management tool. As early as 2003, the federal government began experimenting with telework when 130 employees from nine federal departments and agencies participated in a free telecenter program offered by the General Services Administration. The GSA surveyed the workers after a 60-day pilot program and found 75 percent of those that participated chose to continue teleworking.

Teleworkers can avoid ethical dilemmas by exceeding performance measurements and contributing to the success of the company. As the concept of telework grows and spreads across industries where it is feasible to occur, the ethical issues dissipate and create cultural environments that foster trust, autonomy and efficient use of time and technology. Where work is done becomes secondary to how work is done, which encourages a utilitarian theory of ethics.

It has been said that ethics is all about what you do when no one is looking. This applies to telecommuting in particular since issues of supervision and what one does while working on a job create challenges for those who monitor behavior.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on March 20, 2013