How ‘anytime, anywhere’ work is turning a double-edged sword

The ‘uncoupling’ of paid work from traditional office spaces via smartphones, tablets and laptops is having an ambiguous effect as it is connecting as well as disconnecting people, says a new report.

While in some occupations, the use of ICT (information and communications technology) is facilitating a better work-life balance, in some others, it is encroaching into spaces reserved for personal life, says an ILO-Eurofound report.

The report has called for policies by governments and managements to help all stakeholders adapt to this rapidly changing nature of work that is throwing up challenges as well as opportunities.

India is among the countries that reported a greater ‘blurring of boundaries’ between work-life, along with Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the US. Improving work-life balance have been reported in Argentina, Belgium, Italy and Spain, says the report ‘Working Anytime, Anywhere: The Effects on the World of Work,’ released globally on Wednesday.

For instance, in India, a higher proportion of ‘telework/ICT-mobile work’ (T/ICTM) workers (66 per cent) reported long work hours (more than 48 hours/week) than office-based workers (59 per cent), as per a survey quoted by the report.

While 79.3 per cent of the survey respondents reported that with the help of ICT they could at least occasionally take time off for family matters and 67 per cent reported no impact or only an occasional impact on personal life, about half (51 per cent) said they worked ‘all the time’, 46 per cent said they were on work-related calls ‘quite often’ or ‘most of the time’; and 81 per cent said that they are occasionally ‘on stand-by mode’ when they are at home.

Also, 80 per cent of overtime done by teleworkers remains unpaid (an average of 7.8 hours), compared with 60 per cent of overtime done by office workers (average of five hours).

As regards the positive effects of T/ICTM, workers reported a reduction in commuting time, greater working time autonomy, better overall work–life balance, and higher productivity.

Also, home-based telework is a boon for women as they can combine paid work with family and other personal responsibilities.

But there are mindset challenges of managements with regard to telework, as ‘out of sight’ workers are considered as ‘slacking off’. “Management resistance to T/ICTM is perhaps strongest in India, as indicated by the following statement from the India national study: “Managers may resist teleworking especially in high power distance countries like India because of their inability to control or monitor physically dispersed subordinates who by telecommuting also reduce their dependence on them,” says the report.

The share of T/ICTM workers varies across the countries studied in the ILO reports — from 20 per cent in the US, 19 per cent in the non-agricultural ‘organised sector’ in India, 16 per cent in Japan, to just 1.6 per cent in Argentina.