Telecommuting and Perceived Productivity: An Australian Case Study

Abstract The concept of widespread “telecommuting” in a community envisages the presence of large numbers of employees who, instead of commuting to work, perform either all or a significant fraction of their tasks at home. It is widely accepted that large-scale adoption of telecommuting is just a matter of time in those countries with the necessary telecommunications infrastructure. This paper reports on the conduct of a telecommuting project in a large Australian organisation. The data and the analyses demonstrate that, overall, the telecommuting project has been successful and brought benefits to both the employees and the organisation. The results also indicate the presence of strong positive links between the relationship/interactions telecommuters had with their supervisors, and the telecommuters' perception both of their own productivity, and their levels of satisfaction with the telecommuting experience. The tasks which telecommuters performed were also related to the employees' perception of productivity and job satisfaction.