It is over two centuries ago, when work was removed from home. The phrase “going to work” was later coined to mark the final dawn of the industrial era when workers moved en-mass from their houses to work in factories and offices on a daily basis. Prior to this date, most craftsmen and women worked from their dwelling places, which also served as their workplaces. And now, with the dawn of the IT era, the reverse process is the case, as ‘working at home and from so-called virtual offices’ is gradually becoming a normal phenomenon, especially in the United States and Europe. The new trend, which is also widely gaining grounds in other parts of the globe, has been coined “telework,” or working at a place away from one’s traditional workplace, but maintaining constant contact with it through the use of modern information, hi-tech and telecommunication gadgets.

Globally, the number of “teleworkers” — the new term for describing the army of people working from their homes — is growing at about 20-30 percent annually. Specifically, the number of teleworkers in the United States and EU countries has been growing at fantastic rates and is expected to reach about 50 million at the end of 2005, up from 30 million registered at the end of the last century. Leading the pack of countries with the highest number of teleworkers are the United States, Canada, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. For instance, the number of teleworkers in Finland is about one-third of the number of the nation’s able-bodied, employable population. Though no similar official statistical data on the number of teleworkers exist in Russia, it is widely believed that the new global trend will fall on a fertile ground here, given the rate at which Russians usually copy Western lifestyles and values. Signs that telework has already arrived in the country can be seen in the practices of some companies, especially those with limited financial resources to foot the ever-increasing office rents in major cities, which have asked some or all of their employees to work from home. These workers maintain constant online contacts with their offices through telecom gadgets.

According to results of several surveys conducted in the United States and EU countries, about 4-5 percent of teleworkers have chosen this work format because they are tired of moving through their cities’ congested traffics to and from offices everyday. Others have resorted to teleworking for other reasons, which include the possibility of taking care of children and other family members and physical incapability to commute between home and office. But the overwhelming majority has chosen to work from home for comfort and psychological reasons, including the opportunity to work at a familiar and less formal environment — one reason why teleworkers are often referred to as ‘lazy workers.’ For example, studies conducted in the United States have shown teleworkers to be people, who are mostly above 30 years old and with higher education, and earning an average annual salary of about $45,000.

Building a virtual office

To build a virtual office, a company needs employees who are conversant with a virtual environment. This stems from the fact that virtual offices are based on cooperation of all company’s IT system users working as a dynamic and flexible team. This requires each user to maintain maximum levels of interaction with one another and, the management to fully trust its employees and become an equal participant in the integrated system. Virtual office uses all types of advanced IT and telecom gadgets to achieve their stated goals. This is the case, especially in countries where telework has already become a way of life, and company’s management and teleworkers are constantly involved in researching and testing new software programs and innovational ideas to help devise new ways to improve their available resources and/or maximize their effectiveness.

Today, several special equipment and electronic gadgets for equipping virtual offices are now also available on the Russian IT market. However, IT experts say to equip a virtual office, one does not need sophisticated software programs, as most IT gadgets on sale in general stores and electronics markets in Russia can be used for this purpose. The most important thing, according to experts, is to have a well-trained system administrator who clearly understands the tasks placed before him by the company’s management and can devise the best way to configurate the system in order to ensure maximum effectiveness of all of its constituent parts.

The advantages of working from home

Telework seems to provide a panacea to a lot of problems faced by working people. First off, it gives teleworkers the opportunity to choose how to use their time, give more attention to their families and friends, while their employers save a lot of financial resources from having parts of their work done outside the office. This reduces the traditional pressure on office infrastructure and social amenities. These advantages are highlighted in survey reports conducted in the United States and Europe on telework issues, which have shown that teleworkers’ productivity is much higher, and incidences of truancy are less common among teleworkers than among their regular office colleagues.

Other findings show that it is a lot easier to negotiate overtime and other job-related issues with teleworkers than with traditional office and factory workers. Besides, by working from home, teleworkers significantly reduce the volume of people rushing to work in peak hours, and hence, easing the number of traffic jams on major roads and streets in big cities. Also, maintaining virtual offices reduces the cost of relocating employees from one office to another, or from one city to another, thus helping companies to save a lot of resources usually spent on these purposes. According to experts’ reports, the average cost of relocating an employee from one city to another in the United States is estimated at $40,000. This economy is of significant importance, especially in countries such as Australia, Canada and Russia, which have huge landmasses, where economic centers and major industrial cities are located at thousands of kilometers from one another.

Telework also reveals all the shortcomings, especially in the decision-making process, in the structure of any organization. Unwanted and archaic bureaucratic procedures instantly become evident, when simple issues requiring equally simple decisions take a longer time and several people’s signatures to set the decision-making process in motion.

The minuses

However, the growing wide-scale virtualization of labor has also generated a series of problems of both social and legal natures. One of the legal issues is how does a teleworker get compensated if he/she sustains work-related injuries, for instance, falling off a stool and breaking hands while executing company’s tasks at home, and whether or not such injury qualifies as a trauma sustained in a working environment.

One of major factors limiting the spread of virtual offices is the ability of employers to clearly explain tasks to their teleworkers, or conversely, the teleworkers’ ability to easily comprehend the given tasks. This is very important, because, unlike in a traditional office environment where subordinates and their superiors can engage in ‘clarification exercises,’ until everything is clearly understood, teleworkers are deprived of such opportunity. Therefore, their effectiveness and productivity depend directly on their supervisors’ ability to clearly explain to them what they are required to do. This is particularly important, as supervisors cannot physically monitor the process of executing the given tasks

Telework becomes a real ‘thorn in the side’ of traditional office and factory workers as teleworkers’ ever-ready, 24-hour standby and availability, at times, creates situations at work where managers also expect similar behavior and work attitude from regular office employees. This usually creates unnecessary pressure and tensed atmosphere in a workplace. And lastly, telework significantly reduces the level of social contacts and acquaintances among office workers, and hence, loosening the traditional corporate bonds and spirit of comradeship among co-workers.

These advantages notwithstanding, most experts say the future of telework is very bright and promising, partly because “virtualization of labor” leads to economy of financial and other resources which companies usually spend on telephone and energy bills, office rents, parking and other related services.