The past decade has brought enormous advancements in telecommunication systems and tools, and telework has seen a corresponding surge in popularity. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 20.7 million Americans fulfilled some part of their

1
No Place Like Home A Case Study in Transitioning
to Telework
Dereck G. Chiu, John R. Aiello, Ph.D., and Jason
M. Glushakow, M.S. Rutgers, The State University
of New Jersey
Methods Contd
Abstract
Figure 2 Client Satisfaction
Divided Among Teams

Results Contd
Procedure To preserve anonymity, each employee
generated a unique alphanumerical identifier to
be used throughout the study. They were each
handed a self-report questionnaire one month
before beginning the telework program that was
completed and returned (Time 1). One month after
the transition, a second survey was e-mailed and
sent back by the same method (Time 2). Employees
answered questions that measured their current
anxiety using the four-point State Trait Anxiety
Inventory (STAI) (Spielberger, 1970), and a
variety of others that assessed dimensions
including communication frequency and degree of
trust with supervisors and co-workers,
distractions, self-evaluated performance, and
group cohesion. Two months before the shift,
the organization divided half of the
non-managerial employees into three performance
teams to facilitate inter-office communication
and dependency. Each team consisted of three
members (two network relation associates and one
support technician). Team members worked
independently but were evaluated as a combined
group on five critical domains contingent on
their customer accounts rates satisfaction,
acceptance, renewal, retention, and overall
performance. The teams quarterly bonus was tied
to its success in meeting certain baseline rates
for each of these factors. Employees who were
not members of teams were responsible only for
their own bonus awards.
This longitudinal case study followed the
employees of an existing branch of a market
research company as they transitioned from the
traditional office setting to permanently
telecommuting from their homes. Employees
completed two questionnaires that assessed
dimensions including stress, isolation,
distraction, communication frequency and quality,
group cohesion, and productivity. The first
survey was administered one month prior to
beginning telework and the second was collected
after employees had been telecommuting for one
month. These self-report responses were then
aligned with the organizations objective
measurements of company productivity during the
same time period. While all workers reported
stronger team connectedness after transitioning
to telework, objective performance measures
showed sharp declines for one-third of the teams,
highlighting the adjustment differences between
individual employees in adapting to the
telecommuting lifestyle.
There were considerable differences in the
degree and direction that specific teams
responded to the change of working from home.
When client satisfaction was analyzed by team
(Figure 3), Team A showed a 2.2 improvement,
Team B remained relatively constant (0.7
decrease) and Team C showed a greater decline
(1.2). In overall performance, two teams
exceeded their previous totals, by 1.67 and
4.33, respectively. However, the highest
performing team in Time 1 declined dramatically
(by 11.7) and subsequently became the worst team
after the move to telework. Individual
performance responses to telecommuting were
generally mixed, but this teams members were
consistently among those who struggled the most
in meeting the organizations established
baselines, resulting in one team member
terminated by the organization and a second
placed under probationary review.


Discussion
Introduction
  Table 1 1Strongly Disagree 7Strongly Agree
(Medians)   
Figure 1 Client Satisfaction
Reports  
An analysis of employee responses indicated
that workers generally reported a comfortable
transition and improvement in assessments of team
unity. In preparing for telework, the company
organized half of the branch members into teams
and workers consequently responded that they felt
more like a cohesive group. However, these
optimistic evaluations did not result in higher
productivity for each team and employee. In
certain measures of performance, productivity
declined for some individuals, despite the
implementation of the team concept to encourage
team member accountability. Future directions
will include the administration of a third
questionnaire nine months after the transition,
as the novelty of working from home subsides and
workers become further removed from the
traditional office experience. The branchs
future success depends on a stronger relationship
and greater predictive validity between perceived
team solidarity and production. As more
traditional office workers continue to transition
to permanent and full-time telecommuting,
continued scholarship in this field becomes
increasingly important in recognizing the
positive adjustments that allow some workers to
thrive while avoiding the traps that threaten
employee performance.

Sample Dependent Measures Time 1 Time 2
I feel I am distracted during the average workday. 5.0 2.0
I typically work very rapidly. 5.0 5.5
A great deal of trust is present between my supervisor and myself. 5.0 4.0
I have an opportunity for advancement. 5.0 4.0
The past decade has brought enormous
advancements in telecommunication systems and
tools, and telework has seen a corresponding
surge in popularity. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics estimates that 20.7 million Americans
fulfilled some part of their primary occupational
responsibilities from home at least once a week,
and reported that nearly 30 of management and
other professionals telecommuted in 2005.
Spurred on by the rising costs of maintaining a
physical office, the negative environmental
impact of commuting transportation, and
improvements in internet communication,
organizations are increasingly turning to
telework as a viable work arrangement.
Previous studies have examined the impact of
working from home on stress levels, feelings of
isolation, and relationships with family members
(e.g., Shamir, Salomon, 1985 Kurland Egan,
1999). However, this research has often
concentrated on organizations that retain a
proportion of traditional workers and continue to
maintain a physical workplace (e.g., Hardwick
Salaff, 2003). The literature contains few
studies that follow the closure of an entire
branch of an existing organization, which is
precisely the scenario addressed by the current
research. By conducting a longitudinal case
study of this office just before and immediately
after the changeover, a comparison could be made
between the traditional and the home workplaces
in examining effects on anxiety, distraction,
communication, cohesion, and performance.    
Results
In order to additionally assess the dimension of
staff and supervisor interaction, non-managerial
employees became the focal point of the analysis.
The STAI items showed high reliability for both
Time 1 (Cronbach a 0.92) and Time 2 (Cronbach a
0.94), allowing for the computation of a single
score for each Time. Overall, the STAI decreased
(M1 35.6 to M2 34.6), indicating that workers
felt slightly less anxious in their home office
than in the traditional workplace. Due to the
small sample size, medians are used below to
describe the remaining responses. Employees
reported feeling considerably less distracted at
home (Median1 5.0, Median2 2.0), and worked
slightly more rapidly (Median1 5.0, Median2
5.5). They also appeared to feel somewhat
isolated (Median2 3.0), although they valued
the reduction in commuting stress (Median2
6.0). Workers predominantly replaced lost
colleague face-to-face time with e-mails and
instant messaging (Medians 7.0), less so with
telephones (Median 6.0), and met in person only
rarely (Median 2.0). Despite the change in
environment, there were no differences in
communication frequency with their peers or
supervisors (Medians 6.0) and personal reports
of enjoyment of work remained consistently high
(Medians 6.0). Interestingly, employees
indicated that they felt more like a cohesive
unit once they moved home (Median1 5.0, Median2
6.0).  Teams bonus allocations were determined
by proximity of quarterly performance to five
baseline measures that encompassed client
satisfaction, retention, acceptance, renewal, and
an aggregate of the previous four constructs
(overall performance). To ease the transition,
all teams received full bonuses for the first
financial quarter, regardless of performance.
Employees began telecommuting one week into the
second quarter. Although two of the five focus
areas remained relatively stable (acceptance and
retention), a comparison between
pre-telecommuting and post-telecommuting periods
revealed a significant decrease in performance on
three critical measures. Over a three month
period that spanned the shift, monthly renewal
rates fell from 91.0 to 84.0. In seven months
previous to telework, renewal rates averaged
89.4, compared to 84.8 in five months of
telecommuting. Customer satisfaction also
dropped considerably, from 92.0 during the last
month in the office to 83.0 during the first
month of telework. This figure gradually
improved to an average of 85.6, but still below
the pre-telework average of 88.3.
 


Selected References
Methods

Hardwick, D. Salaff, J. (2003). Managing
work-family boundaries How do teleworkers
make it work? Paper presented at the
Academic Conference Series on Work and Family.
February 28- March 1, 2003. Hill, E.J.,
Hawkins, A.J., Miller, B.C. (1996). Work and
family in the virtual office Perceived
influences of mobile telework. Family
Relations, 45(3), 293-301. Kurland, N.B.
Egan, T.D. (1999). Telecommuting Justice and
Control in the Virtual Organization.
Organization Science, 10(4),
500-513. Shamir, B., Salomon, I. (1985).
Work-at-Home and the quality of working
life. The Academy of Management Review, 10(3),
455-464.


Sample The sample consisted of seventeen
full-time employees (nine males, and eight
females) of a subsidiary division of a market
research organization. They included six network
relation associates (who initiated contact with
new research partners, then monitored and
maintained compliance), three technological
support technicians, three client quality
specialists, and two marketing and survey
researchers, in addition to three supervisors.
At the time of the first administration, tenure
ranged from one month to five years, with the
majority employed for two or more years.


  Caption The drop observed between February
(92 satisfied) to March (83) represents the
transition period to telecommuting.