Telecommuting
Photo by: Victor1558
by Sheila Salar
Thousands of students graduate from various higher education institutions in Lucena City every year, and for a good number of these students, there are already two destinations on their minds when the time to finally join the workforce has arrived: the first one is Metro Manila and the second one is overseas.
Fortunately, a recent trend has added another option for fresh graduates and even those that have been in the workforce for some time now. This trend is called telecommuting.
Telecommuting
Telecommuting, sometimes also known as teleworking, is a term used to refer to doing your usual job without commuting to an office or another designated location.
In a general sense, it’s like a home-based job; however, compared to traditional home-based jobs where you bring your work home and drop it off at your workplace when you’re done, telecommuting jobs can completely eliminate the need to go to a traditional workplace by making use of modern gadgets and technologies such as mobile phones, personal computers, internet networks, file hosting services (Google Docs, Scribd), and Voice Over Internet Protocol software (Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, and Google Talk) to carry out tasks that you would previously have to do at work.
Because of this, people who used to relocate to distant towns and cities in search of more career opportunities can now afford to work from home while earning about as much as traditional office workers do, minus all the regular hassles.
Telecommuting Jobs
Before the rise in popularity of Business Process Outsourcing in the Philippines, telecommuting jobs were typically composed of jobs that require minimal contact between employers and employees such as writing, telemarketing, and data encoding; however, with the increasing demand for workers who can work from a remote location as well as technologies that make such a thing possible, telecommuting has been steadily expanding into other areas of expertise such as computer programming, teaching, accounting, auditing, consulting, translation, animation, and customer service in recent years.
A good example of this is the increasing number of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers who teach English to foreign students such as Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese through VOIP software such as Skype and legal assistants who work for law firms based in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia from the comfort of their homes.
Advantages of Telecommuting
Telecommuting appeals to both employers and employees for several reasons. For one, it means reduced operation cost for employers. Since the number of employees stationed at the office is reduced, water and electric consumption also go down. In some telecommuting jobs, employees use and pay for their own computers; mobile phones; land lines; and internet connection, so those are additional worries to cross out of the employer’s list.
For employees, telecommuting also means less expenses. Since telecommuters work from home, they no longer have to worry about transportation expenses. They also have the freedom to work while wearing anything they feel comfortable in, so they no longer have to worry about buying costly business suits that they are usually required to wear to work. Having the kitchen several feet away from your workstation also means that you can save money you would otherwise be spending on costly menu items at the company cafeteria or the restaurants surrounding your workplace.
Aside from the expenses, another appealing benefit of telecommuting to both employers and employees alike is increased productivity. Most telecommuters are paid on a per output basis, so employers only pay for services rendered and not the amount of time employees spend at the office. For some employers, this means the employee will be more inclined to produce as much output as possible in order to meet their desired pay.
Employees, on the other hand, no longer have to commute to their offices, so the amount of time they usually spend on getting stuck in traffic or dressing up dramatically decreases; giving them more time and energy to finish more work. Since telecommuters can work practically anywhere as long as they have access to the internet, they also have the pleasure of working in places that inspire their creativity which tends to increase the output they produce.
Disadvantages of Telecommuting
Trust and control are the main issues often cited by employers and employees who’ve had experience with telecommuting.
For employers, this means that they cannot just pay their employees a surprise visit to see what they’re doing, so they’ll just have to accept whatever work or report they hand in without asking a lot of questions. This doesn’t cause much of a problem most of the time, but this can be an issue for jobs where a simple mistake can result in a major lawsuit.
In the case of employees working for employers based in some other part of the country or even halfway across the globe, this means that they have no assurances that they will be going to be paid unless they’ve already worked plenty of times together.
In some unfortunate cases, telecommuters who have been scammed by bogus or dishonest clients don’t have much of a choice but to “charge” the whole thing to experience.
How does telecommuting work?
We already have an overview of telecommuting, but how does it actually work?
Next week, we’ll tell you about the work setup of telecommuters; select Lucenahins’ experience with telecommuting; and places where you can find telecommuting jobs, so do try to drop by again next Sunday.
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