Introduction

10.1 More Telecommuting or Less? 10.2 Workplace Campuses 10.3 Alternatives to Traditional Patterns of Work 10.4 Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and the Workplace of the Future

Beginning in the eighteenth century, in much of the Western world, the Industrial Revolution transformed the nature of work as industry displaced agriculture as the main driver of the economy and machines took over manual labor. Continuing technological changes have further altered the way people work and even the time and place where they do so. Growing numbers of people now spend some of their time working at home. Are they more productive without the distractions of the office or less productive without constant monitoring by managers? Some major companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft have constructed elaborate workplace campuses, offering unprecedented levels of amenities and even employee housing. Do these campuses facilitate the balancing of work and life, or do they blur the distinction and tie workers to their jobs instead? Job sharing and flexible work schedules have emerged as alternatives to traditional patterns of work. These practices permit some workers to more easily fulfill work and life responsibilities. But does job sharing reflect employers’ efforts to respond to workers’ preferences or is it a move to reduce costs? How will you prepare employees for the impact of robots at work (Figure 10.1) or manage the outsourcing of tasks to contractors in the gig economy? These challenges to traditional employment settings carry ethical implications for all stakeholders, including employers, employees, suppliers, customers, and clients.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify the benefits of permitting employees to work from home
• Explain the drawbacks of telecommuting for the business and for employees
• Discuss the ethical dilemmas related to telecommuting and some of the solutions

What if your business wanted to expand its local operations from six employees to ten but did not have the office space to add more workers? Today’s businesses have a toolkit of technical solutions to set up working relationships with employees far and wide through voice, computer, video connections, and offsite work- sharing spaces. Coworkers can share files on a remote network server or on the cloud, and managers can use nontraditional methods to monitor activity and performance. Companies like General Assembly, WeWork, and Workbar are leasing access to communal spaces equipped for the business needs of remote workers. Telecommuting is therefore easier to implement than ever. But what exactly are the benefits and drawbacks of telecommuting, and what ethical issues does it raise?

Telecommuting and Its Advantages

The term telecommuting emerged in the 1970s to describe the practice of working at a specific location, whether the employee’s home or an alternate office, to reduce commuting time to a centrally located office space or store. “Telework” was greatly facilitated by new telecommunications technology, including the Internet, e-mail, and mobile phones. Today, telecommuting means any mode of working at a remote location (home or other space) by virtue of an electronic connection and/or telephone and encompasses a variety of employment types, from gig assignments to part-time contract work to traditional full-time employment. The most recent Census data reveal that almost four million U.S. employees skip the commute for at least part of each week, and according to a 2012 poll, worldwide, one in five workers telecommutes frequently, with approximately 10 percent working from home every day.1 Figure 10.2 depicts the growth in telecommuting in the United States, China, India, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Clearly, employers are embracing telecommuting as a tool for flexibility, on a scale from occasional use to full-time implementation.2

Employees can connect to networked company computers from home and use work-enhancing tools on their laptops, tablets, and smartphones to make real-time connections by voice, text, or video with inexpensive or free applications (or “apps”) like FaceTime and Skype. Other software solutions, like GoToMeeting or WebEx, make setting up and even recording a synchronous meeting with sound and video possible for even the smallest companies at fairly low cost. The communication and productivity tools that facilitate telecommuting can only grow in number and sophistication. Virtual reality tools like Microsoft’s Mixed Reality allow a worker in one location to communicate with the holograph of another person in real time. For example, this technology could enable a job interview with a remote candidate. Of course, the use of technology brings with it the need to ensure information security and protection against hacking, including guaranteeing the authenticity of the persons engaging via this technology.