Telecommuting survey: Home office not for everyone

While "telecommuting" —or working from home— may have its benefits, it may not be for everyone, as some still prefer the human interaction at the office. This was the finding of a preliminary presentation by Stanford University researchers who found productivity went up along with hours worked. According to tech site Slate.com, the study allowed customer service employees at a billion-dollar Chinese company to work from home: "Productivity went up, as did hours worked, and employees seemed happier for it," it said. In the study, the chairman of a Chinese online travel agency and Stanford economics Ph.D. student sought out collaborators to assess whether it made sense for his thousands of customer service agents. The company ran the experiment at its airfare and ticketing office in Shanghai, where more than 1,000 employees spent an average of 80 minutes and nearly 10 percent of their salaries commuting to cubicles in two hangar-sized call centers. All employees who had their own room at home and at least six months’ experience with the company were given an option to enrol in the study, which gave them a 50-percent shot at working from the house for four of their five weekly shifts over an eight-month span starting near the end of 2010. The study enrollees who did not stay at home would serve as a control group to ensure that any changes in the productivity of the telecommuters could be attributed to their new arrangement, rather than other random changes to the company’s environment. Of the employees, 255 chose to participate, with those with even-numbered birthdays getting home-office setups courtesy of the company, while those with odd-numbered birthdays stayed on with their daily commutes. In a few weeks, the telecommuters began to distance themselves from the cubicle-bound workers in terms of performance. "Over the duration of the experiment, home workers answered 15 percent more calls, partly because each hour was 4 percent more productive, and partly because home office employees spent 11 percent more time answering phone calls (Home workers took fewer breaks and sick days, rarely arrived late to their desks, and had fewer distractions)," Slate said. Home life The study found the distractions of home life had no impact on the quality of service: The home-work group converted phone calls into sales at exactly the same rate as those in the office. Also, employees themselves liked the arrangement better, making it look like a win-win for the company. Likewise, the home-work group reported less “work exhaustion," a more positive attitude towards their jobs, and were nearly 50 percent less likely to say they were planning to quit at the end of the eight months. The quit rate among home-office workers during the experiment was about one-half of what it was for those making the commute, the study added. Rolling out But when the company rolled out the home-office setup to its employees, only half agreed to the deal, and many of those involved in the original experiment decided that they’d had enough. "(They preferred) the hours in commute in exchange for the human interaction of office life and a fixed beginning and end to each work day. The home office isn’t for everyone," it said. Skewed results? LifeHacker.com said the study results may be skewed a little high toward the benefits of working remotely, as those people who registered for this study were self-selected, meaning that they probably had a natural preference for working from home. "But then again, I'm not sure this actually matters. It's unlikely that people who don't like working from home would be forced to do so, and if you do like it, you'll do better anyway (as this study shows). So the takeaway from this experiment—for use in convincing your employers to let you work from home—is that it's scientifically proven that certain people are more productive working outside of an office," it said. — TJD, GMA News