Teleworking: The Employee Impact Within the Organization Telework (or telecommuting as it is normally referred to), has been around for quite some time now. More so, this is a work option that is bound to grow and increase in the future. Teleworking is known as a specified work option that provides an employee the ability to work and undertake tasks away from a central office base, for instance from a home office or "on the move." From the perspective of both managers and employees alike, it offers certain employees a sense of proper work/life balance. Some of the inclusive benefits is that it accommodates those with health problems or disabilities and can influence organizational effectiveness through improved morale and job satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to describe the impact of teleworking, and its role in reinvigorating proper work/life balance for employees within the organization.

Positive Impact of Teleworking

There are numerous key benefits of telecommuting for personnel. In accordance to Baard and Thomas (2010), the benefits of teleworking to personnel seem to be causal to increased job satisfaction and work life balance, increased productivity, and a decrease in stress brought about by the home setting. Such benefits seem to be more pronounced for the women employees. In particular, teleworkers can attain closer immediacy to and engagement with their families. In addition, they have more control over the working settings. They might experience enhanced and better health because they have less stress, spend minimal time commuting, and can establish more balance between work and family. These benefits aid the employee to attain a sense of control, that in turn results in greater job satisfaction and employee morale. Another benefit is that the personnel attain greater productivity. As for organizations, they gain the capacity to appeal to and maintain proper personnel who have greater morale, effects that improve the competitive repute of the organization (Gainey and Kelley, 1999).

Of course, from the standpoint of the employee, one of the most apparent is having time saved in terms of commuting to and from the workplace every day. Therefore, in a number of increasingly congested urban regions, the time saved can be substantial, at times, almost two hours every day. More so, another benefit of a teleworking work agreement is the increased level of independence and flexibility of the work schedule that affords a sense of control for the employee. Despite the fact that the personnel need to be accessible to consumers, clients and peers in the course of usual business operating hours, working from home enables the individuals to concentrate on work at the time when they feel most invigorated and efficacious. Teleworking can also provide flexibility to turn one's attention to external issues and family necessities, for instance, an appointment to the doctor or activities of the child while curtailing disruptions to the workday (Thomas, 1999).

However, regardless of the fact that teleworking allows creation of qualitative benefits for the employees; it brings along with it certain challenges too. These include trouble in separating work and home lives as well as having a sense of social isolation. To illustrate, personnel who work and undertake tasks from home might find it challenging to distinguish clearly between work time and personal time. Taking into consideration that the ability to work can end up being pervasive, telecommuters at times find themselves working overtime lengthily into the night, on the weekends, or at times when even on holiday. In accordance to Hamilton (2002), 46% of teleworkers worked while on vacation in comparison to 34% of conventional office employees. In addition, just only 24% of teleworkers ranked their work/life balance as being good or very good in comparison to 26% of normal employees, and 38% of those employing everyday flextime, which is the capability to change working hours on a day-to-day basis. The implication is that teleworking does not necessarily result in greater feelings of work/life balance (Giberson and Miklos, 2003).

In addition, the lack of direct interaction with colleagues and peers can cause several telecommuters to experience social isolation and seclusion, or at least a feeling to such effect. This sentiment can exhibit itself in several dissimilar manners. Job achievements and accomplishments can appear less exhilarating devoid of others with whom to revel. Moreover, a number of work tasks can appear overwhelming if the employee has a sense of being excluded from supporting resources. For instance, this can be a well-informed colleague or manager ready to provide feedback or assistance. In addition, the teleworker will also miss informal learning that occurs (through meaningful interactions and exchanges...

One cause that part-time teleworking is deemed ideal is that it alleviates these sorts of feelings of social seclusion and makes the most of the benefits of teamwork and learning (Hawkins and Preiser-Huoy, 1999). Another distinctive advantage of teleworking is that it casts a net over an increased skill base of employees. The reasoning behind such inference is that with more organizations undertaking telecommuting programs, they make it possible to accommodate personnel that do not necessarily have the capacity to work full-time. This is beneficial to individuals such as those who are disabled, elderly, and also those with childcare responsibilities are able to gain work prospects (Mann and Holdsworth, 2003).
Evaluation of Ethical Outcomes

In taking the position that telecommuting is beneficial, it does have an influence on the society and culture at large. To begin with, teleworking is beneficial in ensuring that there is a relief in air pollution and congestion in traffic, of which the outcomes have been undoubtedly positive and constructive. It reduces the number of cars on road, used by commuting employees in transportation to work. In the same manner, teleworking instigates cost saving in using cars or public transport means to travel to the workplace (Leonard, 2013). In addition, the society benefits to the magnitude that teleworking decreases the work-family conflicts and allows parents more time to spend with their children and family. In addition, with regard to ethical outcomes, there is the aspect of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism chiefly proclaims that an individual ought to assess or calculate individuals, course of actions, and the public by how they comparatively embolden human happiness. It measures the effectiveness of a provision that a course of action offers and brings about great benefits for every individual. Therefore, in this case, it can be perceived that through telecommuting, the employee, the employer, the organization, and the society as a whole become happy. The inference is that by failing to expand and enhance on the use of teleworking, the society stands to lose in terms of poor employee productivity, job dissatisfaction, increase in turnover, and lastly harm on the environment (Leonard, 2013).

Interpretation of Statistical Data

The following section of the paper encompasses interpreting statistical data, relevant to the proposed theoretical position, from peer-reviewed articles. The article by Church (2015) examined the perceived benefits from working from home as one of the additional benefits of the job. The research encompassed personnel who had agreed that they had self-selected to work from home in support of an employer. In total, 84 employees submitted survey answers that chose that they do work from home in support of an employer. The same paper also reveals that forty-six out of the total eighty-four participants indicated that their manager also works from home. This indicates that about 54.76% would be more at ease working from home (Church, 2015).

The research article by Torten et al. (2016) analyzed the impact of teleworking on employees with regard to experience, job satisfaction, and productivity. In the research study, roughly 400 survey responses were deemed as a satisfactory sample size for embodying the broad population of telecommuters in the United States. A general linear model multi-variant ANOVA was employed in analyzing these different dependent variables (Torten et al., 2016). As indicated in the study, one of the research questions was: to what magnitude does the variable number of days for every work does telecommuting have to do with satisfaction, productivity and performance. The p value from the ANOVA is 0.108, which implies that the null hypothesis should be rejected, an indication that there is a statistically significant relationship between the amount of days telecommuted every week for both performance and satisfaction (Torten et al., 2016).

The article by Mann and Holdsworth (2003) analyzed the psychological influence of teleworking with respect to health, stress and emotions. The overall scores for every measure for every participant were calculated. The overall stress points for every participant ranked on the Stressful Life Events scale varied from 12 to 299, with an average of 102. Independent t-tests were undertaken to examine whether there is any difference in the psychological and physical health scores for the telecommuters and office employees and showed there was a significant difference between the mental health scores. Such inference seems apparent owing to the fact that the t test score was 1.85, the p value being less than 0.05. This implied greater levels of emotional ill health for the telecommuters. To examine…