Telecommuting and The Mobile Worker

Assignment 2: Telecommuting and The Mobile Worker

CIS 336: Enterprise Architecture

Telecommuting and The Mobile Worker

Telecommuting is a nontraditional work arrangement where instead of coming to work every day, workers are allowed to work from home via the use of internet, email, and telephone. As major institutions realize the benefits of such a work arrangement, it is gaining popularity at a feverish pace. It is all but guaranteed that enterprise architects will come across corporate policies that not only favor telecommuting, but also require that the enterprise architecture account for it and also include that as part of critical business continuity and disaster recovery policies and designs. Therefore, it is worthwhile to pay special attention to some important details of the subject regarding the effects of telecommuting on the organization, business continuity, it’s advantages and disadvantages, and of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) on the organization and IT infrastructure.

From online distance learning for advanced degrees to telecommuting for work, working from home is becoming extremely popular. Major organizations also favor telecommuting because of the noticeable improvement in worker productivity, cost savings, employee satisfaction, and other benefits. Traditional work environments are super-centers of office expenses (furniture, office space, refreshments, facilities, etc.), energy consumption, technology infrastructure, and end user support costs. Even after having spent millions of dollars a year, the traditional office environment still ranks low on employee satisfaction and productivity. Compared to this, telecommuting removes the costs and issues associated with the traditional brick and mortar office. IT operational costs are reduced as minimal office infrastructure has to be budgeted-for, deployed, and maintained, reducing human resource overhead. End user support is commonly outsourced to third party help desks which further increases cost savings. From an employee perspective, they can deliver work on time and have the freedom to manage their life issues at the same time. For most people living in major metropolitan cities, telecommuting means not spending 2 to 3 hours a day travelling to and from work. This has also opened-up opportunities for disabled employees they would not have imagined previously.

From an IT managers’ perspective, telecommuting has some advantages, but also some disadvantages. Therefore, every organization must make a careful determination to see if telecommuting, partial telecommuting, or the traditional office environment will work best for their business model. With telecommuting, the traditional IT manager can have a far-reaching organization and can manage that organization using collaborative tools such as shared calendars, documents, video conferencing, and virtual meetings. The manager can do this with resources in different time zones, and even from different cultures, all the while benefiting from telecommuting him / her self. There are, however, some disadvantages to telecommuting to the IT manager as well. For example, having a widespread team can cause issues in managing work and deliverables. The IT manager might also have a hard time gauging employee workload and the distribution of the work. The manager might also have a hard time determining individual contributions and the letting the employee feel appreciated for those contributions. These could also lead to a low employee morale due to feelings of isolation from the larger organization, and the resulting drop in performance.

For those organizations who not only want to promote telecommuting at the corporate level, but also want to utilize the capabilities in times of natural disasters, the required technologies could easily be made part of business continuity planning and disaster recovery efforts. Some of the considerations in this regard include: 1) dual path connectivity to datacenters. For example, two replicating / load balanced datacenters connected together via point-to-point link, and also through MPLS. 2) Software, storage, and data delivered as part of cloud services. And 3) Heavy reliance on collaborative tools and video conferencing. As infrastructure gets light on the traditional datacenter, the cost savings can be used implement better technologies to facilitate telecommuting, like the Virtual Desktop Environment (VDI).

As telecommuting releases IT organizations from the shackles of the traditional office and computer, it also frees them from the cost of providing expensive laptops to employees. Instead of the traditional laptop, the natural progression is the introduction of Bring Your Own Device. BYOD gives employees the freedom to use whatever device they like to conduct company business. However, this presents unique challenges to data security, datacenter integrity, and system compatibility. To this end, Mobile device management is making great progress in managing the various devices attaching themselves to the office network. This is achieved by creating standards for the various operating systems and pushing network usage security policies from a centralized platform. There is increasing appreciation of the benefits of BYOD from major corporations such as Google. They have developed an extensive suite of collaboration, productivity, and back office services that are device and platform independent. Large corporations are warming-up to these services and realizing the agility and cost-savings they bring in support of their BYOD environment.

Thus, telecommuting and Bring Your Own Device are changing the way organizations think of human resources, their management, contributions, and the infrastructure and environment required to support them.

References

Mayo, M., Pastor, J., Gomez-Mejia, L., & Cruz, C. (2009). Why some firms adopt telecommuting while others do not: A contingency perspective. Human Resource Management, 48(6), 917-939.

Grevstad, E. (2015). Telecommuting: The Antidote to Rush Hour. PC Magazine, 36-39.

Waterfill, M. R., & Dilworth, C. A. (2014). BYOD: Where the Employee and the Enterprise Intersect. Employee Relations Law Journal, 40(2), 26-36.

Magruder, J. S., Lewis, S. X., Burks, E. J., & Smolinski, C. (2015). Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)–Who Is Running Organizations?. Journal Of Accounting & Finance (2158-3625), 15(1), 55-61

Manmeet Mahinderjit, S., Chen Wai, C., & Zakiah, Z. (2017). Security and Privacy Risks Awareness for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Paradigm. International Journal Of Advanced Computer Science And Applications, Vol 8, Iss 2, Pp 53-62 (2017), (2), 53.