Question

Urban Economic

Telecommuting refers to a system under which employees work at home for one or more days per week and use personal computers and telephone lines to interact with people in the office. Consider an office firm that must decide whether to locate in the Central Business District or along a suburban beltway (to be closer to its suburban workforce). Discuss the effects of telecommuting on the relative attractiveness of the CBD.

Answer 1

Which of the following best defines telecommuting?

Answer:- b. The use of personal computers, networks, and other communications technology to do work in the home that is traditionally done in the workplace.

Reason:- telecommuting is the new concept in the organizations where the employees are allowed to work from home.

Allowing employees to telecommute to recruit more talented employees and improve their satisfaction is an example of ____.

Ergonomics

Reason:- Ergonomics is the process of designing the jobs and workplaces as per the requirement of the employees.

Which of the following is not an advantage of a telecommuting policy for a firm such as Yahoo and its employees?

Higher overhead costs and greater office space requirements for the firm

Reason:- With the help of telecommuting, the organization will be able to reduce the overhead costs and requirement for the office space

Summary of the case:-

.

The significance of telecommuting is always in the question mark. In the initial part of 2013, the option of telecommuting was removed by Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s new CEO. This was a surprising move as the high tech industry is the one where this facility is used quite commonly. If we look at the stats, we will find that the use of telecommuting is increasing every passing year and more than million people, or roughly 10 percent of the workforce is utilizing telecommuting fulltime and almost 16% employee utilize it once a week. Improved productivity and better work-life balance are the results of telecommuting.
But in the recent survey found that more than 75% of employees of the USA never used telecommuting. In the survey, it was found that more than 29% of respondents believed that it is of no use as most of the people waste their time in “goofing off.” Yahoo faced the issue of almost vacant office on Friday and most of the employees using telecommuting were not active on Yahoo’s intranet. This forced the CEO to think that due to telecommuting, one to one interaction with the employees is becoming more difficult. In the memo sent to the manpower, the main focus was on personal presence and interaction among the manpower.

James Surowiecki, a writer for The New Yorker also has the same view and states that for the innovation-based organization such a Yahoo, personal interaction is very essential and most of the vale oriented products are developed in the organization when the manpower interacts with each other personally. The companies such as Google are also promoting heir manpower to work from the office and for this various benefits are provided.
Here can be the chance that Mayer is not against the telecommuting but it is the responsibility of HR department to come up with the policies which can help the organization to fulfill its objectives and accommodate the changing requirements For the company such as Yahoo which is struggling in be the front organization, it is important to take the right decision which is important for it.