Penetration of Telework Into Organizations: Findings from Participantobservation in A

Penetration of Telework into Organizations: Findings from ParticipantObservation in a Japanese Company

YUKA SAKAMOTO

W. A. SPINKS

Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Ochanomizu University/ 2-1-1 Otsuka, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, JAPAN

Department of Engineering, Tokyo University of Science / 1-3 Kagurazaka, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, JAPAN

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, there have been reports that many large Japanese companies have introduced telework as a formal in-house program. A major trigger of this development was the Great Tohoku earthquake of March 11, 2011. The widespread paralysis of public transportation and disruption to distribution networks in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake as well as the request for large-scale energy saving that summer forced many companies to introduce telework. Not a few companies have either introduced or are considering introducing home-based telework not only as part of their business continuity plans (BCP), but in order to respond to the Act on Advancing Measures to Support Raising Next-Generation Children (2012) and promote work life balance for their workers.

In fact, recent years have seen an increase in the Japanese telework population. While the share of teleworkers was less than 5% of all employees in 2008-2010, it has been reported at 6.3% for 2011 and 12.5% in 2012 (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation 2013).However, it is common that there are not many home-telework users in these companies and their frequency of home-telework is also limited.The reality tends to be more one of taking overtime work home or working holidays at home instead of going in to work, with cases of working from home during regular workhours being few.

This study addresses what kinds of barriers exist in Japanese companies for increasing the substantive use of home-telework using Diffusion Theory as a theoretical framework.

METHODLOGY

Data was collected though participant observation and group interviews. From April 2012 to February 2013, the first author worked as a member of the HRM division in a Japanese company and helped manage diversity working group activities, including the implementation of a home-telework option.Details of the companywhere participant observation was carried out and the group interview protocols are as follows.

Participant Observation

The company under observation is a member of a U.S. financial group with a total of 13,000 employees. The head-office building is situated in central Tokyo with more than 200 branches and call centres throughout Japan. One of the group companies began considering implementing telework in 2011, introducing a formal program in March, 2012. The program was awarded the Japan Telework Association’s Prize of Excellence two years running in 2012 and 2103 for its participation in an exemplary example of telework promotion.

From April – December of 2012, five projects were implemented in all the group companies as part of a diversity promotion plan. Members were employees from all of the company with 1-2 executive managers appointed as advisors. One of the teams was in charge of implementing telework throughout all the group companies, conducting and evaluating pilot tests as well as revising work rules. At the time, the first author was a member of the secretariat for the five projects and implemented participation observation as well as providing advice on activities.

Group Interviews

Group interviews were conducted with the teleworkers, their colleagues and supervisorsat the first company to introduce a telework program ahead of other group companies. 25 subjects were selected from the 44 workers registered as telework users ina total of 9 sections, 5 sectionswhose managers werepositive about using home-based telework,and 4 sections where workers had children of pre-school or elementary school age. All interviews were conducted in an in-house conference room.

The first author was the main interviewer, but was sometimes attended by the leader and members from the telework implementation project team. The main interview items were 1) frequency of home-based telework, 2) task content: were there any differences with regular work or not, 3) contact and reporting methods when teleworking, 4) perceived benefits and disadvantages, 5) changes in time using compared to when commuting, 6) ease of IT equipment usage, and finally, the most important focus, 7) “How do you think the use of telework can be spread to other sections?”

Theoretical Framework

Diffusion Theory (Rogers2003), especially Innovation-Decision Process, is used as the analytical framework.The study of diffusion originated in sociology and anthropology, but marketing and consumer behavior theorists have adopted the general paradigm for use in their fields to explain new product acceptance and diffusion over time(Lowrey 1991).

Statements made during participation observation and group interviews are used to clarify the specific interaction between the related parties in each of the five stages identified in the Innovation-Decision Process, namely Knowledge, Persuasion, Decision, Implementation, and Confirmation.At the same time, the existence of key approaches not covered by the theoretical framework is also considered. Specifically, the three research questionsaddressed by this study are as follows:

(1)What are the salient factors that affect the decision-making process asexperienced by early adopters?

(2)What hurdles exist in which processes that prevent non-adopters from adopting?

(3)Of the communication channels used by change agents, which do and do not function effectively?

RESULTS

We will first describe thePrior Conditions that pertain to the workstyle of the group company employees. Next, we will describe the results for the three research questions as gleaned from participant observation and interviews.

Prior Conditions

In the majority of workplace, employees commence work before 9 a.m. 8:40 – 9:00 corresponds to the in-house commuting rush hour. Many employees work overtime until 8 or 9 p.m. While they take summer vacation, use of paid leave is low with the exception of workers in routine jobs. A Norm of the Social System that it is important to spend long hours in the office every day is still strongly in evidence. There are individuals, however, who feel obliged to work long hours not because of this norm, but because of their heavy workload.

On the other hand, everyone knows the term “work life balance” and many believe at a cognitive level that it is important. People are aware that it is difficult for workers, especially women, with small children to continue working under the present situation where long hours are considered the norm.

It is said generally that the job range of individual workers and work allocation in Japanese companies are ambiguous, but job allocation seemed clear in the company under study. While it depends on the section and time of year, meetings are numerous. Conference calls to New York and Singapore are also frequent.

Due to the experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the simultaneous updating of IT infrastructure and progress made in introducing thin client systems, laptop computers for home-based work have been given to workers in sections that are critical to business continuity in times of disaster. At the same time, there were 43 workers registered (as of the October 2012 survey) as teleworkers out of some 3,000 in the first company to introduce a telework program ahead of the other group companies.

Factors affecting the decision of early adopters

Factors and processes driving the decision to adopt telework are outlined below in narrative form based on the early adopters group interview.

Relative Advantages

Telework is considered to be suitable for jobs requiring concentration in a quiet environment. A low incidence of personal interaction, including phone contact and informal meetings, is also considered an important factor. The list of jobs considered suitable are translation, drafting contracts, planning, writing proposals and reports, as well as data analysis.

―Do you think being able to combine work with childcare is a major reason for Iwata-san (pseudonym as for all below), teleworking from home?

Harada(Manager): Iwata-san’s job, you know drawing up terms and conditions and so on, it’s more effective to do that sort of work in a quiet environment at home. It’s more effective.

Takeuchi(Manager): Ootani-san’s job, translation is her specialty. So, it’s very easy to do it at home.

Ono: No, no. I mean, having children was a catalyst, I suppose… I just thought in the job I’m in now that it wouldn’t matter if I worked at home one day a week.

We can see from these response that while have a pre-school aged child is one reason, it is not the main reason. Their jobs are more specialized than other employees and the fact that telework offers a better environment for concentration than the central office is the major factor, and one that is easily acceptable by all.

After having experienced telework, however, they cite the effective use of what would otherwise be commute time. There is a very real sense among workers commuting more than one hour that telework is a must-have option.

Ohtani：Yes, the commute is easier. I usually leave home at 6:40 a.m. and arrive at work around 8:30. Compared to that, this is considerably easier. I start around 7:30 when I’m working at home and finish around 5 p.m. Not commuting is an advantage, yes.

―Would you feel unhappy if you couldn’t work from home at all?。

Turuoka: Yes, it’s better to have it. That’s my feeling.

Fukuda：Me too, I’m sure it’s better to have it.

Ohya：Conversely, I’m used to having it as part of my life now. My body’s used to it.

The workers’ awareness of Relative Advantage has changed. They feel a real advantage in their daily lives and for those people teleworking on a regular basis, although they certainly feel it advantageous for work that requires concentration, they no longer emphasizing it to the same extent. They start bundling the kind of work that everyone has, which is not urgently required, for teleworking. There is also evidence that they begin to stress the lack of disturbances from phone calls etc. as an advantage of home-based telework to a lesser degree.

Okamura: There are a lot of cases where people start bundling in-house surveys, e-learning (…) or checking mail or memos they haven’t been able to read properly for their telework days.

Tunoda: At the start, I was preparing documentation mainly, but gradually I found myself doing the same kind of work that I did at the office. That’s how things are now (…) I gradually realized that the phone was still connected even when I was at home, that I would get a response to mail if I sent it, so I started contacting people and I get quite a few calls as well.

However, the number of sections where telework takes places on a regular basis like this are few. Even in areas where there is a lot of business planning, telework more than one day a month is said to be difficult. What then are the characteristics of the sections where telework is a regular part of work?

Managers Knowledge

In interviews with the sections where telework was carried out regularly once a week, it became clear that the managers there had a completely different attitude towards telework. Of the five sections where managers were positively disposed towards telework, managers in three sections themselves teleworked. The following is their response when asked why they were so positive towards telework.

Kodaira(manager)：Things are fine now, but there was a stage when a lot of people were leaving, but they seemed to see telework as extremely attractive (…) I mean, it’s a useful tool when you’re hiring people.

Takeda(manager)：You know, our company used to have that bad culture of working long hours overtime. I think it’s much better to have people become more time-conscious by introducing it[telework]. (…) I think we can certainly arrange work so it fits working at home.

Women with under-school aged children also said they were using home-based telework to help create a culture that was conducive to flexible workstyles for other women who were going to give birth or to raise children.

Ono: (…) There are a lot of women about the same age as me, and I did feel a certain obligation that if I didn’t use the opportunity, it would be harder for the next generation of workers.

These comments show that an awareness of the overall organizational merits of telework can act as a strong force for its implementation. The manager who was most committed to implementing telework had a very clear goal of using home-based work to improve the retention of female employees. He was enthusiastically pushing for the digitalization of documents and business procedures not only in his own section but across his department. His rationale was retaining female workers, or reemploying women who had left the company.

Yuzawa(manager)：[The reason why home-based telework is necessary] the biggest reason is the fact that there is a he number of women who leave because they’ve gotten married, had kids, and later have to look after elderly parents. (…) A lot of these buried people are very capable. (…) we know that they’re more productive.

Despite the fact that this manager repeatedly told his female workers with family obligations to “hurry home”, he had experienced it many times when he had been unable to prevent the deeply rooted long-hours culture forcing female workers out. His experience of being unable to prevent losing talented female workers had made his strongly aware of the importance of work-life balance, and therefore led to his enthusiastic support for home-based telework. The key was his knowledge of how important work-life balance was.

Barriersto adoption

Next, we will consider from the early adaptor interviews and participant observation why telework is not adapted. The key points are Relative Advantages, Compatibility, and Observability.

-Relative Advantages

Many people believe that work involving a great deal of interpersonal contact, such as phone calls and meetings, is not suitable for telework. Work barriers, however, differ somewhat from section to section.

Shinohara: I was really thinking bout teleworking once a month, but it was hard to find the right day. There was always something on.

Yamaya: You end up having a lot of meetings.

Shinohara: Yes, that’s right. There are many times when your time is taken up when it’s not convenient...

Many people pointed out in this way that meetings were a barrier. Teleconferencing is used frequently, however, with the New York head office and for meetings with distant offices. Since it is also possible to use a web-based conference system, the System Section used this to hold meetings with their home-based staff. It was only the Systems Section, however, which was used to using a variety of ICT tools, where web conferencing was used. Other sections either did not know about the system, or replied that it was too difficult to use. Many respondents felt that the advantages of telework were not sufficient to warrant using the web conference system for meetings.

Other barriers that was often cited were documentation and frequent phone calls.

Ono: Teleworking might be difficult because we have a lot of “take a look at these papers” type work.

Ohya: I also have to take quite a lot of calls.

Arai(non-adopter): The paperwork… there’s a lot of confidential information and their kept in closed files at the office. But I’d like to try [working at home].

The following can be said to represent the majority opinion in sections without teleworkers. Home-based telework has no Relative Advantages in terms of the most effective way of working given the current way of doing things.

Takeuchi(Manager): When you think about which is the surest way of getting things done, (…) if it’s more effective to come to work then, I think, they should come. (…) I mean, our base for exchanging ideas with people outside the firm, for having people visit, and for meetings, is here. If you’re not here, then it makes things difficult.

―Don’t you think implementing home-based telework in the section as a whole would improve work efficiency?

Takeuchi(Manager): Not at the moment, no. To be honest. Some people might be able to do it depending on their job if you looked for them. But I don’t think people should be forced to work from home.

In sections where interpersonal contact is the mainstay of operations, there is probably a limit to how much the digitalization of documents can achieve. In the group companies as a whole, however, the use of thin client terminals is being pursued; web conference is already in place; and several sectionswere in the process of digitalizing work files and documentation. The key to whether the adoption of home-based telework will spread or not accompanying these changes does not simply seem to be a question of work characteristics and procedures.

- Compatibility

Many of the early adopters say that implementing telework was not part of their existing work Norms, Value or Compatibility. Almost all early adopters mention the existence of a psychological barrier. The following is a representative example of their comments.