On a typical workday, Allen You uses his cell phone to check his email between 10 and 20 times, often during taxi rides to clients' offices, or as soon as meetings break up.
"It's easy, and it's quick," says You, who works for Swedish telecommunications infrastructure and services supplier Ericsson, of his company's cell-phone based organizer. "Unless you're in a meeting, you can respond immediately." You, head of Ericsson's Taipei project management office, explains that a handset not only weighs much less than a laptop, but also provides faster access.
Such devices, now a common sight around Taiwan, are physical evidence of a trend that has been growing fast in recent years. In Taiwan, as in Japan and many Western countries, more and more white-collar workers are carrying their offices with them wherever they go or using broadband Internet connections to work from home.
Several factors are propelling this shift to what You's boss, Ericsson Taiwan President Séan Gowran, describes as working "independent of physical location."
Gone with Gadgets
In addition to the constant pressure on companies to do things more quickly and more cheaply, there's also a realization among employees that Web-enabled cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDA), and the like can help them shorten or avoid what is often a stressful part of the working day--the commute.
"Modern technologies really reduce the amount of traveling I need to do," says Ericsson's You. "After my last meeting, I can check if there's anything urgent that I need to do, without having to go back to the office. It's really a wasted trip if you go back, only to find there's nothing [that needs your attention]."
For Graham Holdaway, a Briton who has been a full-time home-based "e-commuter" in Taiwan for nearly four years, the advantages of his way of working are twofold. "Because there's no traveling time, I can get up a little later. Also, I get more work done. At home there are fewer distractions compared to being in an office."
Holdaway, who lives in Tainan City, works as information technology administrator for United Kingdom Education Advisory Service (UKEAS), an education counseling company that has offices in Taiwan, China, Vietnam, and the UK. Each month he attends a meeting at the company's head office in Taichung, and he drops by the Tainan office once a week. The rest of the time he is in his home office, staying in touch with his co-workers via Skype, an internet telephony service.
Neither Taiwan's Council of Labor Affairs, Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, nor Focus on Internet News and Data (FIND), a specialized unit of the government-sponsored Institute for Information Industry, publish statistics on e-commuting in Taiwan, and it seems that home-based employees like Holdaway are something of a rarity.
Interviews with leading companies and anecdotal evidence suggest that Taiwanese workers are not embracing alternatives to the office cubicle as fast as their Western and Japanese counterparts--despite being among the world's keenest users of the Internet.
In the United States, e-commuting--sometimes called telecommuting or teleworking--has been growing in popularity since the late 1980s. Twelve million Americans e-commute full-time, according to ITAC, the Telework Advisory Group for WorldatWork, a U.S.-based professional association focusing on human resources. Another 10 million do so at least once a week, and a further 26 million work from home at least one day a month.
According to a July 2006 report in the Sunday Times of London, 2.4 million of Britain's 29 million workers now work from home at least one day a week. A survey by the Confederation of British Industry, an employers' group, found that 14 percent of its members have e-commuting policies and another 10 percent are considering them.
The situation in South Korea resembles that in Taiwan. South Koreans appear to be using the Internet for everything except e-commuting. The 2006 Korea Internet White Paper, published by the National Internet Development Agency of Korea, makes no mention of e-commuting, even though it discusses other opportunities created by the Internet, such as online banking, distance learning and remote medical diagnosis.
International Business Machines (IBM) has more than 20,000 employees working from home full time in the United States. By not having to provide desk spaces for these people, the company saves more than US$8,200 per e-commuter per year, confirms Mike Azzi, a media relations manager at IBM in the US. In Japan, more than 10 percent of IBM's workforce e-commutes on a regular basis.
Mix and Mingle
In Taiwan, where the company has had a presence for 50 years, IBM launched a pilot work-from-home scheme in spring 2003. Unlike their counterparts in the US and Japan, very few of IBM's 1,600 Taiwanese employees regularly work at home, says the company's Taiwan Human Resources Executive F.L. Ke.
"Employees prefer flexible working hours instead of working from home," Ke says. "These offer them sufficient flexibility." But he points out that some female employees occasionally e-commute. "Lots have requested to work at home for one or two days, usually due to urgent family matters."
According to Ke, the reason why most of the staff choose real commuting over the virtual kind is that, "they want to keep in touch with their colleagues, instead of working at home [by themselves]. Social relationships are important for our employees." He does not say whether e-commuting saves IBM Taiwan money, but notes that "the major gain is [achieving a better] work-and-life balance, instead of cost savings."
Acer, Taiwan's best-known homegrown computer vendor, does not have a specific working-from-home policy, says Stella Chou of the company's public relations and branding division. But, she adds, those in sales and product management often work remotely and carry company notebooks for that purpose. "Basically anyone whose task has to be done out of office hours, but prefers not to remain in the office, can work from home," she explains. "Some workers who need to communicate urgently with colleagues overseas also prefer to bring their work home due to the time difference. Also, some workers work remotely while they are on business trips."
Social relationships are one of the reasons that many workers in Taiwan still drag their feet to the office. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
"E-commuting for Ericsson is not about working from home. It's about working efficiently from anywhere at any time," says Gowran. He adds that while those in the finance, human resources and administrative sections of the company do very little work outside of the office, those involved in sales, after-sales support and service do between 40 and 70 percent of their work outside.
Evidence from the US and elsewhere indicates that e-commuting saves employers money and employees time. Many regular e-commuters agree with UKEAS's Graham Holdaway--they get more work done at home than they can at the office. And because it reduces car use, the practice is undoubtedly good for the environment.
The slow growth of working-from-home in Taiwan could be because the authorities have focused on other aspects of the Internet. Taiwan has been building e-government since 1997, and in 2005 the country topped Brown University's Global e-Government Rankings for the third time. But there's no public-sector entity comparable to the Australian National Telework Advisory Committee, created in 2005 to advise the Australian government how to maximize "the economic and social benefits of flexible working practices."
"I am not aware of any policies surrounding e-commuting," says Ericsson's Gowran. Nonetheless, he regards Taiwan's infrastructure as well-suited to remote working: "The availability and performance of broadband access in Taiwan is very good for our purposes... the launch of 3G High Speed Packet Access technologies by mobile network operators [provides] the possibility to be even more efficient through true mobile broadband."
It Depends Where You're From
Some observers think cultural factors are important. Liu Mei-chun, a professor at the Institute for Labor Research at National Chengchi University (NCCU), believes that many employers oppose e-commuting because "they don't have the confidence to allow employees to work at home. They want to see what workers are doing." David Pan, a Tainan businessman, agrees. "I do know a few people who work from home; they're practically all freelancers. Taiwanese bosses still don't trust their employees to work from home."
Also, Pan says, those working from home sometimes do not feel they are really part of the company. "Taiwanese are more dependent on other people [than Westerners]," explains Pan, who spent nine of his first 20 years in Canada. "Our culture isn't a do-it-yourself one. Taiwanese people are used to having their relatives or their co-workers around them. They tend to rely on each other." In his opinion, Western people are more self-motivated than Taiwanese--and that self-motivated Taiwanese tend to run their own businesses, not work for others.
Pan's advertising company, G-idea Multimedia Productions, is growing fast, and employees do sometimes work from home. "We allow it, and I personally have no problem with this." But asked if he would implement regular e-commuting if G-idea outgrew its office, he says: "At first I considered having people working from their homes, but I've found from experience that it's not so good for design work. Feedback is very important. Our workers like to have other people around, so they can bounce ideas off each other."
Graham Holdaway, whose bosses are British, says, "I try to be as strict regarding working hours as possible." He explains that when he does take a break from his keyboard, it's to better think about a complex programming problem. But like IBM's Ke, Holdaway recognizes that work has a social as well as an economic function. The most serious drawback of working at home, he says, is that he misses the casual interaction he could enjoy if he shared his workplace with others. "I'd probably prefer to work in an office than at home because of the social side of things. Usually it's very quiet at home. It took me a while to get used to it."
Supporters of e-commuting argue that it allows people currently inhibited from working--due to family responsibilities, age or disabilities--to participate in the workforce. According to NCCU's Liu, "E-commuting can help a woman balance her work and her family. It's also good for disabled people, who face barriers when getting out of their homes."
But, in the absence of incentives or strictly enforced regulations, bosses are unlikely to change their ways, she adds. "We can't expect employers to permit e-working just to help these people."
Liu thinks geography is another reason why few Taiwanese work from home via the Internet. She points out that in California, which perhaps leads the world in working from home, many people drive long distances to get to their office. In Taiwan, however, commuting "is not so burdensome to employees."
Hackers often try to break into computer networks, and security is sometimes given as a reason why e-commuting is not always desirable. "For reasons of information security, our civil servants are not allowed to work from home via the Internet," says Tien Lin-hu, director of Tainan County Government's Information Division.
"Security is always the biggest concern on any information manager's mind these days, and this is certainly the case for Ericsson," says Gowran. "There are many people and organizations outside the company who would love to trawl our internal databases. Our security policies have been successful in that any breaches have been minor, and none have yet been reported through the e-commuting mechanisms."
Following substantial investment in security, Gowran explains, Ericsson employees can do their work wherever there's an Internet connection. Allen You, for example, is not limited to reading and sending emails while outside. If he needs to access internal company files and databases, he borrows a computer, and gains entry using a business card-sized piece of authentication hardware called a RACOM. "It's like I'm in the office," says You. Carrying such a device means he can usually get away without carrying a laptop.
As Gowran points out, Taiwan already has much of the hardware needed for e-commuting. Taipei City has been lauded for developing the world's largest and densest wireless network; the central government is investing billions of dollars in the services nationwide.
The number of people using wireless technology to keep on top of their work while away from their offices will no doubt increase, because of the sheer convenience and speed it offers. But large-scale, regular e-commuting from home may not catch on until mindsets change, and the government makes it a priority.
___________________________
Steven Crook is a writer based in Tainan County.
Copyright © 2006 by Steven Crook