Teleworking no good for those left behind!

A new study by a New York researcher has for the first time looked at the impact of such flexible working arrangements on non-teleworkers. He found that allowing some staff to occasionally work from home could "harm" those operating permanently from the office, leaving them feeling "disgruntled".

Timothy Golden, associate professor in the Lally School of Management & Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said research so far had focused on how teleworking could ease conflicts between work and family life and improve employee' well-being. However, those who were not offered the benefits of teleworking had largely been ignored.

Golden found the more teleworkers there were in an office, the less likely it was that their co-workers would be satisfied at work. He also uncovered a corresponding decrease in the probability that non-teleworkers would stay with the company they worked for.

The findings were published in a recent issue of the journal Human Relations.

Co-worker relationships

"While reasons for the adverse impact on non-teleworker's satisfaction are varied, it potentially could be due to co-worker's perceptions that they have decreased flexibility and a higher workload," said Golden.

"In addition, it may be that with a greater prevalence of teleworkers in a work unit, non-teleworkers may find it less personally fulfilling to conduct their work due to the increased obstacles to building and maintaining effective and rewarding co-worker relationships."

He added that the findings suggested that managers may be able to help mitigate some of the adverse impact by ensuring greater face-to-face contact between co-workers when employees were in the office, and granting greater job autonomy to accomplish work activities as employees see fit.

Hot-desking

Meanwhile, a separate study has suggested that so-called 'hot-desking' - another popular development in flexible working - could have a detrimental impact on "knowledge sharing" at work.

Kate Bonsall of the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield claimed that situations where workers were frequently out of the office and shared their desk or workspace with others, could indirectly compromise company performance.

Outlining her findings at the British Psychological Society's annual occupational psychology conference, she said: "At a time when many companies are promoting hot-desking, they need to recognise this may have an impact on information sharing.

"Hot desking is associated with a weaker sense of cohesion within a team and may limit personal learning from knowledge sharing across the company."