What your competition is doing.

Nation needs a workplace rethink

Publication Date：11/21/2008       Section：Commentary
By Steven Crook

Taiwan has a small army of self-employed designers, programmers, and translators who work from home. Most of these individuals receive assignments and deliver finished work via the Internet. They do not waste time commuting to an office, nor do they have to dress smartly for work.

Despite a very high rate of Internet access and an economy that is increasingly white-collar, few nine-to-five employees have joined the ranks of Taiwan's e-commuters. Across the island, working from home is still very much the exception. While there are no reliable statistics as to the number of people who work in this manner, it is certain that compared to their counterparts in the United States and Japan, Taiwan's large companies have been slow to adopt telecommuting.

This is unfortunate for those in Taiwan who would like to e-commute so they can spend more time with their families. And it means employers are missing an excellent chance to boost productivity and cut costs.

Nurses, construction workers and others doing jobs that could not possibly be done through the Internet should also be concerned, because telecommuting benefits society as a whole. Rush hours become less hectic and thus safer. Working from home is undeniably good for the environment: Fewer car and motorcycle journeys mean lower greenhouse-gas emissions and healthier air.

The obstacles that stand in the way of Taiwan enjoying the maximum environmental, social and economic benefits of telecommuting are more cultural than physical. The hardware--high-speed, reliable Internet access--is already in place. It is management attitudes that need to change.

Many Taiwanese employers believe in "management by surveillance." In other words, they make sure employees do the work assigned to them by watching them continually or paying a supervisor to do so.

If e-commuting arrangements are to be successful, "management by surveillance" has to be replaced by something akin to what Peter Drucker calls "management by objectives"--a process whereby managers and workers agree upon objectives and deadlines, which the latter then tackle without constant monitoring. While it is difficult for any government to effect cultural changes, it would be easy to create conditions that would hasten any shift in this direction.

Starting with large, high-tech companies--because they tend to be very receptive to new ideas--the government should require employers to devise plans allowing some part of their workforce to work from home one or two days a week. This goal is not overambitious. In 2004, the Japanese government announced a target of 20 percent of the country's labor force regularly working from home by 2010.

Successful telecommuting programs should be publicized and rewarded in an effort to win over skeptical employers. If IBM Corp. can cut costs by US$8,000 per year for each worker moved out of an office and into his or her home, it should be possible for companies with Taipei offices to save substantial sums. Moreover, some studies suggest that, because they are removed from the distractions of an office, teleworkers are up to 40 percent more productive than their cubicle-bound counterparts.

Just as it subsidizes the installation of green technology, the government should offer incentives to companies that allow e-commuting. Workers who lack the necessary hardware at home--not just a computer with high-speed Internet, but also ergonomic furniture that prevents injuries--should not have to buy their own.

Internet security is an issue, but not an insoluble one. Companies like Ericsson have made their computer systems so secure that employees are permitted to work wherever there is an Internet connection. Employers should be given help in this regard, just as they already get government assistance for industrial upgrading.

How much would this cost the country? In net terms, likely nothing at all. Growth in telecommuting would lead to major savings elsewhere. Less driving would mean fewer traffic accidents, which in turn would reduce police and medical costs. Better air quality would lead to fewer cases of respiratory disease.

According to a 1995 study by Yen Jin-ru, a professor in the Department of Shipping and Transportation Management at National Taiwan Ocean University, Taipei City Government would save between US$75.3 million and US$271.4 million per year on road construction if just 5.9 percent of rush hour trips were replaced by e-commuting.

It has been said that, even if employers can be won over, few Taiwanese workers would opt to telecommute. People who live alone or in cramped apartments are not especially fond of staying home. And there are certainly some for whom power dressing, and the prestige of working in Taipei's swankier areas, are important.

However, those who are married with children typically have different priorities, and are likely to embrace a practice that makes balancing family and career much easier. A government that encourages telecommuting may even find, some years on, an uptick in Taiwan's precariously low birth rate.

--Steven Crook is a free-lance writer based in Tainan.

These views are the author's and not necessarily those of the TJ.

Copyright ?2008 by Steven Crook