Comparison of the Job Satisfaction and Productivity of Telecommuters versus in-House Employees: A Research Note on Work in Progress

Job satisfaction and productivity were compared for 34 in-house employees and 34 telecommuters performing data-entry and coding. Job satisfaction was measured on the Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire and a five-item work arrangement subscale. Group productivity was measured by data-entry transactions per hour. No between-group differences were found on over-all job satisfaction and subscale scores; however, seven individual items relating to concerns about work-at-home differentiated the groups. Significantly different between-group ranks of importance on 12 of the 25 questionnaire items were found. Despite important limitations in our experimental design, the results suggest that telecommuting tends to increase satisfaction with specific work arrangements and that telecommuters are likely to be more productive than in-house workers on structured, repetitive tasks.