The practice of working outside one's office by utilizing information and communications technology, known as telecommuting, is gradually spreading.
This includes not only working at home but mobile work in which people use mobile devices for work while away from their offices on business. It also includes people working at satellite offices set up outside their offices by their companies. All this can be described as options for flexible work styles.
The government is making efforts to spread telecommuting as a measure to ease the crowding expected to take place during the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in 2020.
During the Tokyo Games, spectators will likely total more than 10 million, with the number of people using railway services expected to increase by 10%. If through telecommuting there is a decrease in the number of people commuting to work, it will without doubt be helpful for clearing up the congestion.
During the London Games in 2012, about 80% of corporations took measures such as telecommuting and granting vacations to overcome the problem, and it is said that they achieved good results. In Japan as well, it is hoped that companies and national and local government offices will make active efforts in this respect.
It is important to prevent the practice of telecommuting from ending up as a temporary step to be taken only during the Olympics.
Many expressed favorable views about telecommuting in connection with a social experiment in which about 2,900 corporations and organizations took part this summer.
The participating companies gained such advantages as a reduction in the number of workers' overtime hours and an improvement in the efficiency of their business operations due to large cuts in the use of paper documents. For their part, the employees did not suffer fatigue resulting from commuting to work, with people saying they were able to spend more time with their families.
Skillfully utilizing telecommuting will make it easier for people to properly carry out both company work and the tasks of child rearing and nursing care. Doing so may also help prevent people from having to leave their jobs because of such tasks and resolve the labor shortage.
However, the spread of telecommuting faces many problems.
Working outside one's workplace entails a risk of information being leaked. Such a work style requires providing personal computers used outside one's office while also reinforcing the security of information, and this will incur an increase in the costs covered by corporations. Measures should be taken to cope with the issue, such as ensuring that tasks dealing with highly confidential information are removed from the list of duties to be covered through telecommuting.
Labor management is also important. If the boundary between people's work and their private lives is made ambiguous, it could have the opposite effect of leading to working long hours. It is vital to grasp telecommuters' working conditions and facilitate a system for assessing the way they work.
It is also necessary to consider means of maintaining communication between telecommuters and the superiors and colleagues working at the office.
At major precision instrument manufacturer Ricoh Co., employees engaged in telecommuting report to their superiors about plans for their day's work and the results, while also utilizing teleconferencing to participate in company meetings or business negotiations with their clients.
According to a survey by an economic organization, 70% of corporations that have not introduced telecommuting have no work assignment suited to that practice. Individual companies are advised to start by reviewing their work routine and the substance of the tasks involved in a manner suited to the actual circumstances.
-- This article appeared in the print version of The Yomiuri Shimbun on Dec. 23, 2019.
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