Info Tech Stats: Response to peer2 discussion(300 words) in 5 hours

 Telecommuting is the process of working away from office which includes either working from home or anywhere outside the office. Telecommuting is also called as e-commuting. With the help of telecommuting, the employees can also work while travelling where they can keep in touch with their co-workers and other employers via telephone and email (Bernardino, 2017). According to Global Workplace analytics report, about 3.9 million US employees or 3% of the total US employees work from home at least half of the time. There is almost increase of 150 percent of telecommuting people when compared with 2005. Almost 40% of the employers offers flexible workplace locations to their employees.  For introducing telecommuting in the company, the following are the technical requirements which includes both hardware and software requirements.  There should be a high-speed internet access for telecommuting and a slow system and a dial-up connection won’t work (Nicklin, Cerasoli & Dydyn, 2016). There should be a fast processor, enough disk space and plenty of RAM. The computer can be a desktop computer, or it can be a laptop (Nicklin et al., 2016). The computer should have enough USB ports for connecting microphone, camera and other accessories (Nicklin et al., 2016). The computer should have all kinds of software’s like graphic designing software, video-editing software, complete Microsoft office kit and other professional relevant software’s (Nicklin et al., 2016). A telecommuter should have a printer, scanner and a copier (Nicklin et al., 2016). There should be traditional office supplies like pen, pencil, stapler, rubber bands, office clips and other document folders. There should be a backup process and it should be on cloud as it is a telecommuting, the process should be done very easily and secured way (Nicklin et al., 2016). There should be Team Viewer and Any Desk for accessing the computers remotely. All the files that are shared between the company and the employee should be done on a secured server and the emails should also be done on a secured server (Nicklin et al., 2016). As the employee will be telecommuting, most of the work and sharing should be done on cloud and all the tools should also be present on the cloud. There should be a dedicated phone line and there should be a telephone headset and web camera (Nicklin et al., 2016). There are various advantages and risks in using telecommuting and they are described.  With telecommuting, the organization can save the office space, utilities and parking space (Allen, Golden & Shockley, 2015). There will be more chances of increase in productivity and performance of the employee This encourages flexible work hours and it increases the potential savings in time and money (Allen, Golden & Shockley, 2015). There will be increase in job satisfaction. This will reduce the leaves of the employees Even during the emergency situations, the work in the office can be done Employees will have more control over their work environments (Allen, Golden & Shockley, 2015). Apart from the advantages of telecommuting, there are also some challenges with telecommuting as well.  There will be difficult communication as if in the office, the manager or HR can stop and discuss some important things but during the telecommuting process, there should be virtual media connected where the expressions of the other person cannot be identified properly (Nicklin et al., 2016). There can be lack of career advancement as the office culture cannot be insisted in the employee if they work from home. There will be no proper relationships with the fellow employees There will be no company culture as they work from home (Nicklin et al., 2016).   References  Allen, T. D., Golden, T. D., & Shockley, K. M. (2015). How effective is telecommuting? Assessing the status of our scientific findings. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 16(2), 40-68.  Bernardino, A. (2017). Telecommuting: Modelling the Employer’s and the Employee’s Decision-Making Process. Routledge.  Nicklin, J. M., Cerasoli, C. P., & Dydyn, K. L. (2016). Telecommuting: What? Why? When? and How?. In The impact of ICT on work (pp. 41-70). Springer, Singapore.