Telework Perspectives of Employers, Managers, and Employees

Employer Perspective Of Telework

The employers believe that the remote work has an impact on the employee collaboration, the firm culture and the manager control. These 3 C’s are crucial to the firm’s bottom-line. To understand the employer’s perspective, Mulcahy and Andreeva (2023) reviewed existing research evidence, and carried out eleven structured interviews with corporate leaders about their experiences with remote, in-office and hybrid work. None of the employers they interviewed was returning to only in-office work. All the employers they interviewed were implementing a hybrid return-to-office policy. However, the specifics of the policies were different for each company.

First, they found that leaders maintain a belief that employee collaboration is negatively impacted by remote work, but the evidence to support this assumption was mixed. They found that the remote work does not have negative effects on performance.

Second, the firm culture is often cited by employers as an important rationale for bringing employees back to the office, but the research evidence suggests that the notion of firm culture is vague. The idea that better firm culture is supported by in-office work is the employer’s belief.

Third, the shift to remote work caused corporate leaders and front-line managers to worry about effectively managing employees they couldn’t see every day. They found that companies did not widely begin implementing employee monitoring systems in lieu of on-site management. Their interviews suggest that much learning remains to transition managers and leaders to effectively managing remote or hybrid employees and teams (Mulcahy and Andreeva, (2023),

For employers, some of the benefits of telework work include fixed-cost savings and higher productivity of employees and managers. The employers save on the cost of office space and utilities. They have to spend less money on utility bills, supplies and other operating expenses.

However, offering remote work to employees improves the work force talent pool in quality and diversity Employers can hire the best and wider talent for the job regardless of the location. The widened talent pool increases employee diversity for creative problem-solving and innovation. There is higher employee retention, fewer sick days and reduced absenteeism. If companies do not offer at least hybrid work option, they risk losing potential candidates and current employees. More than 80% of the people take the opportunity to work remotely if the company offers it (Hackney, et.al., 2022).

An ‘integrative’ approach includes both the top-down considerations involving managerial preoccupations with strengthening the organization’s competences and bottom-up considerations of the employee needs. One disadvantages of the remote work involves the difficulty of managing employees. Effective communication among employees and managers and ensuring successful teamwork are challenging. Organizations wishing to increase the use of telework have to implement manager telework training. Managing telework employees adds to management responsibility.