Analysis of the impact of teleworking on the productivity of software engineers in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Telework can be defined as a work arrangement which allows employees to work from home or any other flexible place with flexible working hours instead of their office. For IT professionals teleworking is an ideal alternative working arrangement with their knowledge and the advance of the technology. There are a lot of studies had conducted in this area. But there are not many studies conducted in the Srilankan context. This study intends to find and analyze factors that affect the software professional’s productivity when they telework in Sri Lankan IT organizations. Based on the review of the literature on teleworking and the productivity of software professionals, teleworking is not a new concept to the world. Especially for the IT industry. It has been proved that teleworking increases the productivity of the employees. Hence this study has chosen nine factors that affect to the teleworker's productivity by analyzing the past studies. The preliminary survey has been conducted to identify the most important variables in the real software industry within the Sri Lankan context. These factors are work-flexibility, work-wellbeing, technology, effective communication, and self-regulation. The quantitative research method has been followed as a research methodology in this study. Hence an online survey questionnaire is distributed among the 500+ employees in software companies in Sri Lanka. The questionnaire has contained 38 questions. Before publishing, this survey researcher has done a reliability analysis to check the goodness and internal consistency of the questions. Descriptive analysis is utilized to describe the fundamental characteristic of the data in the research study. Pearson correlation coefficient is used to test the hypothesis of this study. Furthermore, in order to estimate the strength of the correlation between the variables, the researcher has conducted the regression analysis. As a consequence of the investigation, it can be concluded that work flexibility work-wellbeing and self-regulation have a strong correlation with the teleworker's productivity while effective communication has a moderate impact. Even though it has a low impact, technology has a considerable impact on teleworking productivity. Furthermore, a set of recommendations are suggested to improve the teleworking productivity of software professionals in the Sri Lankan software industry. These suggestions will enable the employer to motivate his fellow employees. The motivation of software engineers directly affects the quality of the software that they develop. Thus, by implementing these suggestions while meeting the need of employees, productivity can be increased.