This really needs to be higher, and the paper actually read by us, as it addresses the nature of the work, the study size and methodology, as well as sociological issues. All things that these other comments speculate about
Crucially it's not IT, the work is a call centre travel agency (and it's also in China).
"First, the job of a call center employee is
particularly suitable for telecommuting. It requires neither teamwork nor in-person face time. Quantity and quality of performance can be easily quantified and evaluated. The link between
effort and performance is direct. These conditions apply to a
range of service jobs, such as sales, IT support, and secretarial
assistance, but they are far from universal. Second, the firm can
closely monitor the performance and labor supply of the employees thanks to its extensive centralized database. Team leaders and managers could generate a report from the database of
the performance of the team members daily and easily detect
problems in individual employees’ performance. Third, the
extent of WFH was limited, so that it did not require a significant
reorganization at the workplace. Team leaders continued to supervise their teams with a mix of home and office workers without
any major reshuffling of team membership."
Geez, a call-centre? I thought "virtual call centers" are common nowadays, i.e. you can be at home doing laundry, when the phone rings, it will say "Call for $COMPANY", you pick up and say "Hello, $COMPANY, Angela speaking, how may I help you?"...
Crucially it's not IT, the work is a call centre travel agency (and it's also in China).
"First, the job of a call center employee is particularly suitable for telecommuting. It requires neither teamwork nor in-person face time. Quantity and quality of performance can be easily quantified and evaluated. The link between effort and performance is direct. These conditions apply to a range of service jobs, such as sales, IT support, and secretarial assistance, but they are far from universal. Second, the firm can closely monitor the performance and labor supply of the employees thanks to its extensive centralized database. Team leaders and managers could generate a report from the database of the performance of the team members daily and easily detect problems in individual employees’ performance. Third, the extent of WFH was limited, so that it did not require a significant reorganization at the workplace. Team leaders continued to supervise their teams with a mix of home and office workers without any major reshuffling of team membership."