Telecommuters have better work/life balance than office workers

Telecommuters: Happier?

Depending on your point of view, this news could be blindingly obvious or quite a surprise. For this writer, the idea of working from home means that he'd always be 'in the office' making the work/life divide much blurrier than simply switching off the computer at 5pm and heading home.

However, recent research from Brigham Young University published in the Journal of Family Psychology found that telecommuters experience a better work/life balance than office-based employees even when working significantly longer hours.

The report used staff from IBM as a basis and analyzed 24,436 workers in 75 countries to identify the number of hours that had to be worked before 25 percent reported interference with personal and family life.

It stated that officer workers, with their relatively inflexible schedules, reached this point when their hours exceeded 38 hours per week. However those that could telecommute meant they were able to achieve 57 hours per week with their time typically divided between office and home, depending on the nature of the task being undertaken.

Both male and female workers appreciated the advantages of flexible working arrangements.

"Beneficial"

Lead author of the report, E. Jeffery Hill stated: "Telecommuting is really only beneficial for reducing work-life conflict when it is accompanied by flextime."

He added: "Managers were initially skeptical about the wisdom of working at home and said things like, ‘If we can't see them, how can we know they are working?'."

However the report seems to indicate the opposite with more than 80 percent of IBM managers agreed that productivity increased when flexible working arrangements are made available. In the current economic situation, financial constraints are encouraging more widespread introduction of such schemes.

Hill noted, "A down economy may actually give impetus to flexibility because most options save money or are cost-neutral. Flexible work options are associated with higher job satisfaction, boosting morale when it may be suffering in a down economy."

Expect to see requests to work from home go up in the near future....

The study is titled "Finding an Extra Day or Two".

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