Page 3: Working Remotely

Unit 3, Lab 5, Page 3

MF: could use review/light revision; tough to have 2.17 SI labs back to back

On this page, you will consider the ways that technology enables long-distance working relationships.

    This study found that productivity increased for call-center workers working from home over a period of nine months.

  1. Working remotely and telecommuting usually mean working from home instead of coming to an office. Not all employers let their employees telecommute. As an employer:

    • What reasons would you give for not wanting your employees to telecommute?
    • What benefits might you see for allowing employees to telecommute?

  2. There are other ways that technology enables workers to work from afar. Choose one or more of these topics to research and discuss.

    • Technology can help doctors treat patients remotely. This can be especially useful for clinics in rural areas, or for helping more people access doctors who specialize in the areas they need. Other developments in technology are helping doctors monitor vital signs or perform surgery using robots. Search for articles about telemedicine to learn about its benefits and potential downsides.
    • Farming can’t be done remotely. So how is technology affecting agriculture? One way is by giving farmers power through real-time information, such as market prices for food and animals, so that they are aware of fair prices. It can also help farmers find customers for their products. Read about new initiatives and their challenges in countries all over the world. For example: Top 10 mobile agricultural applications (IT News Africa).

    • Outsourcing is paying other companies to perform tasks or provide services at a lower price than it costs to hire employees to do them. Companies often outsource certain tasks to other companies that may (sometimes) be in other countries where people are paid less. Technology has made outsourcing easier. But technology companies often outsource things like janitorial services, in part so they can say things like “All our employees have excellent health benefits.” (… But the janitors aren’t employees, so they don’t count.)

      How can it cost less to pay another company to pay a janitor for you, so you are paying both the janitor and the boss of the janitorial company, than to pay the janitor directly? The answer is that the janitorial company pays very low wages. Often they hire undocumented workers, who can’t complain to authorities without risking deportation. This is another reason the technology companies like to outsource low-paying jobs: It’s illegal to hire undocumented workers, but if you pay a janitorial company instead, you’re not hiring workers directly and it’s not your obligation to check on their eligibility for employment.

      Sometimes individuals, not just companies, outsource parts of their lives. Search for articles to read about personal outsourcing companies and people who use them. For example: Average Joes, Janes Outsourcing Tasks (CBS News). You can also learn about Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a forum that pays humans to do tasks that computers cannot do. They call them ‘’Human Intelligence Tasks’’ (HITs); people who perform these tasks successfully are generally paid very low amounts.