TELECOMMUTING APPLIED IN PUBLIC AGENCIES AS A SOLUTION FOR DEVELOPMENT CONCERNS

Leandro Sumida Garcia

UFABC Universidade Federal do ABC Av. Dos Estados, 5001 Santo Andr 09210-580 So Paulo Brazil

Diego Marcochi de Melo

UFABC Universidade Federal do ABC Av. Dos Estados, 5001 Santo Andr 09210-580 So Paulo Brazil

ABSTRACT This paper aims to present a brief case study to show the viability of implementing telework on a Federal University in Brazil. As the use of this kind of work arrangement is noteworthy through developed countries and also in some newly industrialized countries, telecommuting still faces cultural and technological barriers. However, what might be a strategy to spare budget in the past may now prove to be one of the ways to respond against current environmental issues, as well as improve workers motivation, thus benefiting the company and its stakeholders. Therefore, this work intends to analyze some of the needs for the telework, and how to implement it in a governmental corporation. KEYWORDS Telework; telecommuting; telework in government agencies; telework in higher education institutions.

1. INTRODUCTION
The paper presents a study that aims both presenting telework as a broadly acceptable work arrangement and verifying how this way of work may be adequately applied in governmental corporations, focusing on newly industrialized countries. Among the problems faced by these developing nations, we are able to highlight two which potentiate each other: the increasing size of their cities (according to the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (2009), within the next 15 years six of the most populated cities will be located in those countries) and the lack of greater investments in application and research of Information and Communication Technology in some of them. Telework, also called telecommuting, has been studied by Tremblay (2002) who defined it as the act of applying Information Technology in order to perform the job partially or totally outside the place where it will present results. The author also lists some pros and cons of telecommuting: Advantages: flexible working hours, diminished necessity of movement between house and office, more time spent with family, better work results. Disadvantages: less personal contact with colleagues, more work to do, lack of self-discipline, internet speed worse than in the office. Golden (2007) adds some points against telecommuting by showing that non-teleworkers are more likely to be unsatisfied if there is a higher proportion of teleworkers in a company. It might happen because the ones that are not telecommuting have the perception of getting a heavier workload and less flexibility. This jealousy is also a concern of Lister and Harnish (2009), who also mention the communication issue: not everybody knows how to sustain good co-work relationships just by phone and email, thus affecting negatively the interaction between teammates. However, recent research done by Fonner and Roloff (2010) shows that teleworkers do not see less contact with colleagues as a drawback. In fact, it is seen as a benefit: avoiding the typical conflicts and

pejorative unimportant conversation, the employees who stay out of the office may focus on their activities, build better relationships and have diminished chances of developing stress-related problems. Ziegler (2011) also showed that about 54 percent of non-teleworkers believe they are as close to their teleworking workmates as their office-based ones, with no relationship harm. Moreover, 87 percent of the surveyed employees think telecommuting success relies on adequate technology provided by the company. Most of the studies apply to companies that focus on profit, and for which an investment is not justified if there is no positive cash return. This short paper intends to present a previous analysis on the possibility of telework as a strategy for agencies of the public service, in order to offer advantages for the employees, the agencies and the society. The need of solutions for the ever-growing concentration of people in urban centers creates the opportunity for the governments of the newly industrialized countries to encourage the application of Information and Communication Technology as a resource for the development of sustainable cities.

2. IMPLEMENTATION SCENARIO
In Brazil, Federal Higher Education Institutions (HEI), as defined by FORPLAD (1995), are created by federal law and supervised by the Ministry of Education (MEC). Their objectives are to provide all the society with education, research, extension and the promotion of the human knowledge, and the regular education is free (from undergraduate to doctorate). The academic community, people who are directly linked to the HEI, is comprised of students, teachers and technicians. The HEI used as case study is the Universidade Federal do ABC (Federal University of ABC UFABC), which started its activities in September 2006, and has no field of knowledge division; instead, multidisciplinary centers work with provosts and offices in order to manage all its 23 undergraduate and 14 graduate courses that cover Exacts, Human and Biological sciences. In order to analyze the application, impacts and necessity of telecommuting, there were chosen two departments: the Provost for Graduate Education and the International Affairs Office. The first department is responsible for providing the administrative support for masters and doctorate degrees. It has 27 technicians distributed in four divisions (Academics, Management, Courses Support and Students Support). The maturity level of its processes, if considered the model studied by Stemberg et al (2007), may be put at level 3, as there is a standard that is often followed, but there is no a clear integration yet. Thus, activities may be controlled by deliverables, not only by direct supervision (Lister and Harnish, 2009). The International Affairs Office has the goal of developing international and institutional relationships of the university, promoting scientific and academic exchange. Its five technicians work without defined distribution of tasks, except for the secretary, who has specific activities. The maturity level is about 2, as there is customer satisfaction and most of the processes have standards, but the overall operation remains with incomplete documentation. These departments were chosen because of two factors that may affect the process management complexity: the size, considering number of employees (as a higher number of people typically means more tasks to control) and the maturity of the processes (if an activity has defined deliverables, it is easier to manage its accomplishment, as noted by Stemberg et al, 2007). And the adequate management has, among other tasks, providing adequate Information and Communication Technology for the success of the telecommuting (Tremblay, 2002; Ziegler, 2011).

2.1 Implementation
Following the administrative and infrastructure prerequisites for telework, established by Tremblay (2002), three main steps were defined in order to implement this work arrangement: List the processes characteristics of the departments and identify which ones may be totally or partially performed during telework; Analyze each of the department posts, measuring whether their activities are part of the processes identified before; Formulate a telecommuting proposition for the departments, including controlling indexes for efficiency and quality;

Lister and Harnish (2009) list specific jobs that can be done exclusively out of the office, such as call center agents, medical transcriptionists, virtual assistants and remote tech support employees. Thus we are able to recognize, using the descriptions provided by the authors, characteristics that can make an activity possible to be put in telework: elaboration and translation of documents (e.g.: letters, communications, transcripts and declarations), web designing, provision of information by email/phone and financial management. With these statements, it is possible to review briefly the processes and activities in the departments, showing the ones that fit in telecommuting: Provost for Graduate Education (PGE): the Academics division, among its responsibilities, provides transcripts and declarations of enrollment to students. Management division takes care of the financial administration of the courses, project management and scholarships. Students Support serves current and prospective students by email and phone and in the Student Office. Courses Support helps the courses coordinators and faculty in their academic activities; therefore it has intense contact with other professors, physical documents, and students in special cases. International Affairs Office (IAO): its activities include the translation of documents from Portuguese to English and French, contact with universities abroad by email and phone, control of administrative process, and several projects like language courses and home stay for foreigners. In Table 1, there are distributed the employees who perform the teleworkable activities:
Table 1. Employees versus activities Employees post Accountancy technician Administrative assistant Administrative assistant Administrative assistant Division Management (PGE) Management (PGE) Students Support (PGE) Academics (PGE) Teleworkable activities Financial administration Scholarships control Email and phone support Elaboration of transcripts and declarations of enrollment Control of documents for thesis defenses, room reservations and emails Financial administration, web designing and translation of documents

Administrative assistant

Courses Support (PGE)

Administrative assistant

IAO

The amount of work in each activity is not enough to make necessary for an employee to telecommute completely (i.e. every day) but, if there is a process mapping and measurement, each employee can telework from one to three days a week and work in the office during the rest of the week. This is sufficient, considering at least six employees, to reduce the need of space in the office with adequate distribution, two employees spots will be saved. For the indexes to control the execution and quality of the activities, it is easier to define them for the activities of elaboration (PGE department) and translating (IAO department) of documents, as they can be monitored by quantity. Activities that have a more qualitative deliverable may have its efficiency controlled by measuring the co-workers and customers (students, professors and the community in general) satisfaction, as the goal of the institution is to serve the common good. It is important to note that standards need to be built before the telecommuting, as the manager will not be able to see precisely whether an activity is being well or bad performed without parameters for comparison.

3. CONCLUSION
The brief study showed potential for application of telework in agencies of the public service, as the implementation may be a solution for some current and future concerns about environment and society, also bringing benefits to the employees and without prejudicing the services delivered to the community. However, some level of process maturity is needed, because there is the necessity of developing adequate indexes in order to control the activities results. Without process standards and clear reasons for the choice of activities (and employees) being put in telecommuting, public funds will be wasted and the nonteleworkers satisfaction will diminish. Future works may be developed by applying telecommuting in an entire public agency and measuring the populations satisfaction before and after the application. There is also potential in relating telework and egovernment, even having an agency which works fully or almost fully in the web, with both employees and community interacting by the web. This would bring a great and positive impact in traffic, for example, as traffic gridlocks, pollution and lack of quality of life are three problems pointed by the McKinsey Global Institute (2011) as symptoms of diseconomies of scale and factors that may prevent sustainable growth in Latin America, and problems that are present in other developing countries as well.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Our thanks to the Human Resources Department and their managers at UFABC.

REFERENCES
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