✅ ADVANTAGES and DISADVANTAGES of teleworking or telecommuting

The telework, despite having both advantages and disadvantages, is increasingly present in the reality of our labor market due to the large number of benefits it can bring to the day-to-day life of the worker.

What is teleworking or telecommuting?

Teleworking or telecommuting allows the worker to develop his tasks from the comfort of his home or personal office, with all the advantages that this entails. The reason why it is becoming more widespread every day is mainly the development of the Internet and telecommunications, which allow that every day is less relevant the fact of being in person at a particular job.

Advantages and disadvantages of Telework

Although some of the disadvantages of teleworking are difficult to palliate with the improvements in technologies, there is no doubt that the benefits it brings to the labor market are going to make it spread more and more in different labor sectors.

Advantages of teleworking or remote work

The main word that describes the advantages of telecommuting is flexibility; you only have to look at the list of benefits it offers us to realize it:

It saves the worker time and money, as he does not have to commute every day to his work station and return home after the working day.
It offers the worker greater flexibility of schedules, since by working from home, they can better adjust their schedules and manage them as they wish.
In addition to saving the worker from having to go to the workplace on a daily basis, telecommuting allows the worker to develop his tasks from wherever he wants, so it gives him a great spatial flexibility. You can work for a few weeks from a city, and continue with your work without any problem after moving to any other city.
As a result of saving the worker’s transportation to the workplace, teleworking helps to reduce pollution of workers.
Also, by not having to provide the worker with a workstation in an office, the company that hires him saves money, which makes it easier to hire this type of workers.

Disadvantages of teleworking or telecommuting

Telecommuting has certain disadvantages that you have to be careful with, or they could be counterproductive for the worker, the company or both. Here are some of them:

The teleworker may feel isolated by not having the same contact with people he/she would have in the office on a daily basis. This can be avoided by “agreeing” to regular attendance at the office from time to time.
Not all workers maintain the same level of productivity when they are not being closely supervised, so telecommuting can be a double-edged sword for those workers who are not very responsible or who have difficulty maintaining and adhering to a schedule. This can be avoided by creating processes to monitor workers’ production.
Teamwork can be made more difficult or worse when it is not performed face-to-face. For teleworking to be beneficial, it must be organized in a way that is appropriate for teams, using the right tools.
The teleworker may have trouble being able to concentrate on their work from home, or may not have the most optimal tools or environment for them.

In conclusion, he knows no doubt that teleworking is going to become more and more widespread, since the benefits and flexibility they bring to the worker and companies (and therefore to the labor market), are very numerous.