Informatica 23 (1999) 137-142 137 Research on Telework in Slovenia Eva Jereb, Miro Gradišar Faculty of Organisational Sciences, University of Maribor Kidričeva 55a, 4000 Kranj, Slovenia Keywords: telework, teleworkers, ofRce automation Edited by: Rudi Murn Received : April 24, 1998 Revised : September 16, 1998 Accepted: December 9, 1998 Although a lot of research on telework has been done, most of it has been carried out in USA and EC countries. Until today there have been no studies on telework in Slovenia. This paper presents the results ofa study oftelework in Slovenia carried out in 1997. The paper also compares telework betv/een Slovenia and other European countries. Introductio n Information and communication technology provides organisations with a new flexibility as regards where, when and how work is performed, which gives rise to a number of new organisational forms and new ways of performing work [16,19]. Through the implementa­tion of electronic Information systems, the structure, procedures and content of office work are changing. Increased attention is now being paid to a new form of work known as telework. Telework allows spatially and organisationally decentralised office work, with work results being sent back electronically via communica­tion netvvorks. This has only become possible in the last few years through the developments in the areas of distributed Information systems, office aut omation and telecommunications [13]. In the 70's some authors had high expectations when they believed that "ali Americans could be homework­ers by 1990" [11]. A decade later others stated that "by the year 2000 approximately 40% of the employees in the US will be teleworkers". The latest estimate is that in many development countries 10%-15% of the workforce will be teleworking to some degree by the end of the century [15]. In 1990 there were 2 million teleworkers in US, in the year 1994 7.8 million and the estimations in the year 1994 were that in 2001 there will be 30 million teleworkers [2]. Different surveys [1,6] have shown that telework is slowly penetrating into Euro pe as well. According to the results of surveys in 1994 the number of telework­ers in the five largest European Community countries was approximately 1.1 milUon by the time. Extrapo­lating this figure to the whole Europe gives a total of 1.25 million tel eworkers. In terms of absolute num­bers of teleworkers, the United Kingdom had the most with 560 000, followed by France with around 215 000 teleworkers, Germany with 149 000, Spain with 102 000 and Italy with 97 000 teleworkers. Telework is being introduced slowly step by step. In most cases, first the combination of working in the company and working at home is beirig.practised. At first teleworkers are vvorking at home for an average of 4.2 days per month, after a year or two for about 8 days per month [3,17,20]. Because of the benefits the interesi in telework is growing among employers and employees. Benefits to employees are: saving on time, money and effort in commuting to work, better concentration at work, fiex­ible working hours, better balance between work and family life. Telework enables taking čare of young chil­dren, elderly or disabled relatives and allows into em­ployment people unable to work in the traditional way, such as disabled or handicapped people. The main advantages to employers are: increased productivity, better office space utilisation, reduced overhead ex­penses, reduced travel costs, reduced electricity, food and other costs [9,10,18]. Of course telework has its drawbacks as well. Em­ployers are concerned about data security and loss of control. Some are concerned about the legal rights and normal protection in law that employees are afforded [7]. Telework may increase the cost of living for the teleworker (home office heating and power, food, .. . ) [8]. Teleworkers may not be keen on carrying out their own typing, filling, and other routine office functions. Some teleworkers may miss the social interaction of the workplace. The feeling of belonging to a team that is working for a common goal may be lost [4]. In the paper we discuss the methodology used in our research, the instrument, data collecting and results. In the end we show some results of the Empirica sur­vey [12] carried out in 1990 in 14 European companies parallel with results of our survey carried out in 1997 in 15 Slovenian organisations and give an conclusion. 140 Informatica 23 (1999) 137-142 E. Jereb et al. Need for Worry for Importance of fiexible working hours promotion and career personnel contacts High Medium Low No need Ves No Don't know High Medium Low People, who are in-25% 43% 19% 13% 14% 42% 44% 57% 40% 3% terested in telework People, who are not 13% 29% 33% 25% 21% 17% 62% 83% 13% 4% interested in tele­work Saving on effort in commuting Loss of review of what's going on in company Very high High Medium Low Completely Partly No Don't know People, who are in­ 6% 16% 46% 32% 10% 72% 15% 3% terested in telework People who are not 0% 8% 29% 65% 42% 45% 0% 13% interested in tele­ work Table 2: Telework affected by psychological and sociological factors When the results are analysed according to company size, next trend comes to light: the greater the size of a company, the more interest is in telework. That holds for France, Germaiiy and United Kingdom but not for Italy [12]. We wanted to find out how company size affects tele­work in Slovenia. We predicted that company size does not affect interest in teleworking and test showed that on the risk level 0.05 we can accept our prediction. In the end we show some results of the Empirica sur­vey [12] carried out in 1990 in 14 European companies parallel with results of our survey carried out in 1997 in 15 Slovenian organisations. Results of teleworking surveys in different Europea n countries One of the questions we were interested in was "why were companies interested in introducing tele\vork". This is of course a question with two sides, that of the employer and the employee, since telework can only take plače when there is sufEcient convergence of in­terest for both parties to agree to it. We turned to the employer's side. There is in fact a wide range of reasons companies might have for consid­ering the introduction of remote work. We identified six common motivations: increased productivity, re­duced commuting costs, reduced central office's costs, flexibility in working hours, employment of the dis­abled and retention of scarce skills. In Table 3 we are showing the importance of these reasons to managers in Slovenia in 1997 and to managers in other European countries in 1990. As it can be seen from the table these reasons are very important to managers from Slovenian compa­nies. It is hard to say why but it may be due to the fact that Slovenia is a small country with a population of 2 million which became independent in the year 1991. In the transition to a market economy and private own­ership, most larger companies have disintegrated and managers of these smaller companies want to make a good use of the telework possibilities in order to gain bigger competitive advantage. Increased productivity and flexibility of working hours are for our managers the most important reasons for introducing telework. Communication is a particularly important compo­nent of distance working, so the employees were asked about the use of communication media. Table 4 sum­marises the results. We can see that employees in Slovenia spend a lot of time on telephoning and meetings. What I think might be worth considering. Table 5 shows the proportion of work done at home or outside normal working hours by gender. We can see that the majority do perform some of their work in the evenings or at weekends. That goes for Slovenian and other European companies. In Slovenia there are more men then women who do a part of their work at home or outside their normal working hours. In other European countries in the 1990 there were more women then men. In table 6 we are showing interest in telework of men and women in different European countries. As we can see employees in Slovenian companies show very high interest in televvork. Slovenia has not been independent for a long time and maybe employ­ees are now looking for new chances to succeed. RESEARCH ON TELEWORK IN SLOVENIA Informatiča 23 (1999) 137-142 141 Slovenian companies (1997) Other European companies (1990) Important Unimportant and Rank Important Unimportant and Rank Increased productivity (%) 87 no answer (%) 13 order 1 (%) 36 no answer (%) 64 order 2 Reduced commuting costs 71 29 4 29 71 3 Reduced central office's costs 75 25 3 29 71 3 Flexibility in working hours 83 17 2 29 71 3 Employment of disabled 71 29 4 14 86 4 Retention of scarce skills 52 48 5 43 57 1 Table 3 : Companies' reason for introducing telework No use Once a week Several times Once a day Several times (%) (%) per week (%) (%) a day (%) Slovenia 1997 7 1 5 2 85 Telephone Europe 1990 46 3 19 8 24 Slovenia 1997 93 3 3 0 1 Teletex Europe 1990 98 2 0 0 0 Slovenia 1997 98 2 0 0 0 Videotex Europe 1990 99 1 0 0 0 Slovenia 1997 60 7 14 4 15 E-mail Europe 1990 84 3 6 5 2 Slovenia 1997 37 27 17 8 11 Postal service Europe 1990 29 7 47 11 6 Slovenia 1997 62 17 11 6 4 Courier Europe 1990 69 21 7 2 1 Slovenia 1997 18 2 15 5 60 Meetings Europe 1990 25 45 27 3 0 Table 4: Employees' use of Communications medla Conclusion There are only few companies already practising tele­work, but a lot of them are thinking about introducing it. Although the US is currently the leader in this pro­cess, interest in the rest of the world, particularly Eu­rope, is accelerating. Interest in telework is seen also in Slovenia. In the empirical research among Slovene or­ganisations carried out in summer 1997, we found out that managers and employees are interested in tele­work. We found out that technology needed for tele­work is not the basic problem in introducing telework and that almost aH of potential teleworkers have their own for teleworking needed equipment. The survey also showed that technological factors and the content and way of work performed within a specific working plače determine its suitability for telework and that telework is strongly affected by psychological and so­ciological factors. We also found out that managers are sometimes troubled by the idea facing the prospect of managing a team of remote workers and they know that their tasks will partly change and that also the way of control and way of policy making will change. Managers are also concerned about employment con­tracts, most of them think that it would be necessary to legally define the working conditions of teleworkers and clearly state the unique responsibilities of both parts. 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