Dr. Glenn Dutcher
Dr. Glenn Dutcher, Assistant Professor of Economics, was quoted in a widely circulated CBC story headlined “Who gets more done — office workers or telecommuters?”
In a tight labour market, workers with in-demand skills may have the leverage they need to snag coveted telecommuting privileges. But seasoned remote workers and an economist who studies productivity said there’s still a negative perception that stands in the way of making those arrangements happen.
Glenn Dutcher, an assistant professor of economics at Ohio University, studies the impact of telecommuting on productivity. He and his research colleagues have found that many people still doubt that remote workers get as much done at home as they would in an office environment.
In an experiment that explored how telecommuting affects groups where some employees work in the office and others work from home, Dutcher found that productivity of the whole team hinges on whether office-based workers think their remote colleagues are getting things done.
“The results were pretty consistent. However we looked at it, we found that if they believed that telecommuters were less productive, then they contributed less work themselves,” said Dutcher.
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In an earlier study published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Dutcher and his colleagues found that some tasks are better suited to telecommuting than others.
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