Work and Family in the Virtual Office: Perceived Influences of Mobile Telework

Abstract

WORK AND FAMILY IN THE VIRTUAL OFFICE PERCEIVED INFLUENCES OF MOBILE TELEWORK* E. Jeffrey Hill, Alan J. Hawkins, and Brent C. Miller** Telework is a rapidly emerging reality in the workplace. This study explores the influence of mobile telework on family life as reported by teleworkers in a large national corporation (n = 157). In addition, this group is compared to an equivalent group of office workers (n = S9) from the same corporation. Mobile teleworkers reported much greater work flexibility. Some reported that their families thrived because of this flexibility. Others reported that their families struggled because workplace and schedule flexibility blurred the boundaries between work and family life. Suggestions are given for how family life educators might help mobile teleworkers ease the transition from traditional work to the virtual office. Watching masses of peasants scything a field three hundred years ago, only a madman would have dreamed that the time would have come when the fields would be depopulated, when people would crowd into urban factories to earn their daily bread. And only a madman would have been right. Today it takes an act of courage to suggest that our biggest factories and office towers may, within our lifetimes, stand half empty, reduced to use as ghostly warehouses or converted into living space. Yet this is precisely what the new mode of production makes possible: a return to industry on a new, higher, basis, and with it a new emphasis on the home as the center of society. ([my emphasis) Toffler, 1980, p. 210) Since Toffler's (1980) Third Wave, many futurists have written about the promise of the electronic cottage to benefit family life. Advocates for family-friendly work policies have long called upon companies and governments to establish work-at-home programs as part of a flexible work agenda (Galinsky, 1992). The recent advent of truly portable work tools and significant changes in work organizations have created the opportunity for millions of information workers to move into this frontier of flexible work. Still, there has been little research on how flexibility in the timing and location of work affects family life. The impetus for this exploratory study is the need to look at the perceived influence of the virtual office on the personal/family life of the mobile teleworker. The Beginnings of Telework The general term for doing work away from the office via telecommunications equipment is telework (see Bureau of National Affairs, 1992; Callentine, 1995; Nilles, 1994; Olson, 1988; Pitt-Catsouphes & Marchetta, 1991; U.S. Department of Transportation, 1993). Although telework was foreseen as early as 1950, it did not become practical until the advent of personal computers and portable modems in the early 1970s (U.S. Department of Transportation, 1993). In 1973, the term telecommuting was introduced to emphasize that telework could eventually replace the daily commute to the work site (Nilles, 1994). Companies first seriously considered the possibility of telework as a means to make them less vulnerable to fuel shortages during the OPEC oil crisis in the early and mid 1970s (Tolbert & Simons, 1994). During the last decade, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of American teleworkers. Ten years ago there were fewer than one million employees who teleworked away from the office at least 8 hours per week during normal business hours (Callentine, 1995). The number of teleworkers has grown more than eightfold, to about 8.4 million today (Henkoff, 1995). The number is projected to grow about 10% to 20% per year through the end of the 1990s to about 10-20 million (Greengard, 1994). Most early teleworkers were telecommuters who voluntarily worked from home one or more days per week. In recent years, a companymandated virtual office form of telework, sometimes called mobile telework, has been a significant factor in the increase of teleworkers (Greengard, 1994). …