Working at Home Using Computers or Telephones Is Better Than Working in the Office?

In the 21st century, the efficiency in office operation is corporations' common goal. They search different ways to finish more work in limited time and space. Requiring some employees to work at home using computers or telephones rather than to work in the office is one of the effective methods to increase operating efficiency. This method will bring benefits to employees, corporations and even the whole society.



Working at home using computers or telephones enable employees to work unconstrained by time and space. Employees can work at any time available in any place. Take newspaper photographer as an example, in order to record the latest happening events with their video camera, they may need to fly abroad or even step into the front in the war. Moreover, the events probably do not happen in office hours. Working at local home or restaurant using computers to handle photos and then sent back is less time-consuming and more convenient than flying back to work in the office to hand in these photos. Therefore, working efficiency is greatly improved.



For the corporations, requiring some employees to work at home using computers or telephones helps to reduce transaction costs of corporations, including managing costs and labour costs. According to Kesidi's transaction cost theory, the larger the scale of corporation, the higher the transaction cost will be. In fact, many work does not have to be done in the office, some work such as telephone selling and data analysis can completely be finished at home as long as the information needed was mailed to employees. Actually, many corporations such as the Pacific Life Insurance Company and Amway Nutrilite Company now are considering and implementing the plan to require more employees to work at home. They make such decision because they benefit from the diminishing transaction costs of corporation, and the saved money can be input into the research and development of products which are more crucial for the...