Professional Skills for Information and Communication Technology

Describe the professional skills for information and communication technology?

1.1. Organizational Context

According to the Labor Force Survey of UK, there exists 2.2million teleworkers in UK that makes a workforce of 7.4%. They are mainly defined as the individuals who work from their home using both their computers and also telephone for completing their work. There are three different categories of teleworkers in the industry they are “occasional teleworkers who generally do not work from home by does atleast in a week, the home-based teleworkers who work from different location by utilize their home as base and lastly the teleworkers homeworkers who permanently work from their home (White, n.d.).

Talk Talk Group is an organization that offers mobile network services, internet access, telecommunications and pay-TV as their business services in UK. Initially in the year 2003, it was started as Carphone Warehouse and later on 2010, the organization was demerged, creating headquarter in London. Talk Talk has invested in their own infrastructure known as Local-loop-unbundling (LLU) with around 92% customer bases in the year 2012 (Talktalkgroup.com, 2015).

1.2. Objective and Methodology

In order to get rid of traffic chaos in UK, the organization has decided to provide the flexibility of working from home especially for the women and disabilities. However, the major concern raised by the top management of Talk Talk is to understand the advantages and disadvantages of teleworking and also the issues associated with teleworking. Thus the objective of this report is to give a rationale for implementing the teleworking services and also to address the concerns of top management. The report will discuss various opportunities of using teleworking.

1.3. Report Outline

The report will first define the concept of teleworking. Secondly, it will explain the advantages and disadvantages of using the teleworking services. Thirdly, the report will address the security concerns of the top management along the strategies to reduce the risk. Fourthly, it will explain the growth opportunities for increasing the engagement using teleworking. The report will be concluded with brief summary of the overall report and also the recommendation.

Teleworking is the concept of working from home or any other location for part-time or full-time basis. Teleworking can be termed as re-location tool. Telework that is Home-based was characterized in the undertaking as alluding to teleworking courses of action where an individual works dominatingly from the home, either as a representative of an organization or as an ambitious person, with work being conveyed to and from its source in an assortment of ways, including utilization of the different information transfers offices now accessible (on-line) furthermore of more conventional method for correspondence (Off-line). On-line telework includes the utilization of an electronic connection (utilizing a modem and phone) between the specialist at his/her remote workstation and the boss or foreman. The electronic connection is utilized for correspondence and transmission of work. Off-Line telework includes utilization of traditional transportation (e.g. conveyance via auto, mail, dispatch and so on.) in either the conveyance and/or return of work to source. The work might either be in hard duplicate structure or put away on circle or tape. While both on-line and disconnected from the net manifestations of telework are right now being used, the logged off structure is at present more normal than the on-line structure. On-line telework is progressively growing, then again, because of the improvement of information transfers administrations (Jackson and Wielen, 2002).

Introduction to Teleworking

It opens up a path for various activities that are independent of the place. It might be utilized as a method for decreasing urban fixation and its disadvantages and of leveling out regional irregularity by encouraging the land re-circulation of livelihood. Economic re-distribution can along these lines advantage distraught or disengaged areas inside a solitary nation or inside a gathering of nations that have decided to seek after a typical provincial arranging approach went for opening up specific districts or decreasing populace channel. Imbalance is likewise reflected in the level of work expenses. Additionally, transport expenses are persistently climbing in the thickly populated zones. While cost differences is valid for one and the same nation, it applies significantly all the more so when diverse nations are analyzed. Additionally, social charges in India or Philippines are low due to which a computer profession in those nations receives less salary compared to European. Teleworking can as a rule end up being a tool for re-finding employments to low-wage nations or areas where social charges are lower (Avery and Zabel, 2001).

3.1. Advantages of Teleworking

The advantages attained to rely on upon a scope of components, including the way telework is actualized; the quantity of workers who are teleworking; and the nature of computerized framework accessible. It is also believed that both the employees and the employers are benefited through such implementation. The teleworking arrangements actually help the employees to recognize the issues and improve their work-life balance. Further, this process of teleworking can be used to prevent stressful commutes and also gain some time for pleasurable activities. Additionally, it is helps to increase the retention of the employees. Teleworking is the way of making the business able to utilize various services which the workers might not be able to provide (Valmohammadi, 2012).

For employers, the advantages can include (Baruch, 2000):

• Diminishments in the cost of operational, increase in the advantages, and also a development
• Enhanced maintenance and enlistment results, particularly when telework is actualized to overcome deficiencies in aptitude created due to geological obstructions
• A diminishment in non-appearance joined with the family issues of the personnel and also through helping to balance the work/life of the personnel.

For employees, the advantages can include (Scholefield and Peel, 2009):

• Increases satisfaction in job and also enhances the work-life balance
• Increases financial saving and a decrease in the stress caused due to huge traffic and driving
• The capacity to stay in a territorial or country group instead of moving keeping in mind the end goal to discover work
• The possibility to keep the job even while relocating further from the house.
• The employees can improve the business by saving costs on various aspects like parking space or office spaces while the workers prefer teleworking facilities.

More general advantages to the group can be acknowledged through:

• Increases participation of workforce
• Decreases in fuel utilization, traffic congestion and also greenhouse gas emission connected with driving.

3.2. Issues with teleworking

However, the teleworking concept has various potential drawbacks like (Basole, 2008):

• Absence of oversight: Supervising the teleworkers who are working from home directly is unrealistic.
• Lessened productivity: Few individuals are not comfortable with at-home working environment, either due to some constraint in their capabilities or due to family preoccupations to spotlight on activities when more enjoyable activities (bicycling, cultivating, staring at the TV, and so on.) wave.
• Security issues: According to Kevin McNeely in Providence Business News, the remote get to needs of remote workers and other portable staff makes a gap in security dividers with Talk Talk Group. “Strategies should be implemented to permit the all representatives to have access while isolating undesirable gatecrashers. This incorporates intermittently overhauled secret word assurance and enlightening workers concerning the necessity for security of remote access”
• Disengagement: The flexibility of working alone accompanies a value the trouble of isolation for Talk Talk Group Management. It is longed for quite a long time where individuals would simply permit the management to sit unbothered, and with telework, people get their wish—in spades. Partial teleworking process, in which the workers spends a share of every week (1-3 days) in the workplace and the rest of from home, can in some cases be a compelling method for tending to this issue.
• Disintegration of culture of organization and also morale of department: Many companies like Talk Talk Group include few personnel who have a significant positive effect on the predominating the environment of the office. Sometimes when these executives of the organization go into the process of working from home projects, their deficiencies are frequently intensely felt by the other staffs. Further, this issue from the normal operations of the organization can even have a destructive impact on the community operations.
• Lack of “brainstorming” ability: Given that a significant part of the quality added to the generation prepare in Western economies is at the “learning” end of the range, the dispersal of brains could be an issue,” says Richard Thomas in Management Today. “The casual skipping around of thoughts is troublesome, or even incomprehensible, without the vis-à-vis contact of an imparted working environment.”
• Seen harm to profession: A typical discernment among workers of organizations that grasp teleworking choices is that remote workers are set off guard as far as professional success and opportunity. Surely, some expert boulevards, for example, administrator positions—may be stopped to laborers who need to keep working from home, however businesses ought to endeavor to dodge an “outside of anyone’s ability to see, out of psyche” viewpoint from coming to fruition.
• Legitimate weakness: Some investigators have are concerned about risk issues in regards to the practice of working from home, which has to be settled down totally by the management. They face challenges, for instance, risk of manager for home-office mishaps under legislative; relevance of the protection scope of the boss when they are working at home; and responsibility regarding supplies of proper information or document found at the home that is specific to the organization.

There are various security issues associated with teleworking and it is the responsibility of the managers of Talk Talk group to manage those issues. One of the risks is that the intruders will be able to access the corporate systems without having access to onsite. Electronic eavesdroppers, hackers will get the chance of watching the passwords and IDs of employees and can hack and misuse the corporate information.

Further, issues in protecting the internal system like how to manage if an intruder get access to the information of the employee, how to ensure integrity with the public networks etc are some of the issues that Talk-Talk might face if proper set-up is not implemented. Lack of robust authentication is also another issue which has to be maintained by Talk- Talk Group. They need to make sure that the systems provided or the systems used by their employees are robust authentic and all the internal system should be routed to a particular system. The combination of routing and robust authentication would help to increase the security and also decrease the cost that is linked with robust association by restricting it to the employees of the organization with maximum access (Itl.nist.gov, 2015). Since, it is easier to steal the session of robust authentication by the intruders, thus, the managers of Talk-Talk need to use the cryptography techniques and also digital signature for every packet.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Teleworking

The organization can also face issue for data transferring. As, eavesdropping is not technically complex, if the intruder has a physical access to wire or cable for logical access or communication. Thus, Talk Talk group need to implement hard ware or software based encryption to protect the issue of eavesdropping. Further, as the organization aim at implementing the telework process mainly for the disabilities and women, so there might all create security issue, as they will be using their own computers. The main issue will be confidentiality and data storage integrity at home. Also, theft of a computer actually complicates the set up, then repair, troubleshooting, software support are some of the issues that the organization should focus on (Nemati, 2008).

Therefore, to maintain such security issues, the organization can utilize some of the approaches like (Johnson, 2013):

• Dedicated utilization: If Talk-Talk needs dedicated use, then the top managers should identify the difficulties that have to be enforced.
• Encrypting the data: Since, the corporate data consists of some sensitive information, thus, to protect the data, the organization need to use encryption process that can be stored in a hard disk. This helps to detect the modification and also maintain confidentiality of the files.
• Use Hard Drives that are removable: The risk of losing the data can also be reduced by using the removable hard drive like floppy or pendrive etc.
• Employees Accountability: The organization can also use rules that the home members or the home-based workers need to abide by so as to prevent issues related to confidentiality and integrity.

The teleworking process has become a good opportunity to motivate the employees for taking u their responsibilities effectively. According to Labor Force Survey of UK, in the year 2007, around 3.2million people have been working from their own home or different places making their home as a base. Out of these 3.2million people, 2.5 million people have utilized both the computer and also telephone to carry out their work effectively from home. The telework process has increased from 40% in the year 1997 to 79% in the year 2007 and also the homeworkers has also risen from 2.3million in the year 1997 to 3.2million in the year 2007 (Parker, 2008).

Both the sectors; private and public sectors have been up taking the process of teleworking, which constitutes 74% and 26% of workers respectively. This rise in the workers in teleworking process shows the significant rise in the self-employed workers, e-lancers and freelancers who are mainly working for the private sector contractors or employers. Even though, self-employed workers represent a smaller share of workforce, however, they have the overrepresented teleworkers, accounting for 61% in the year 2007.  In the year 2007, the men comprised of two-third of teleworkers compared to women. Similarly, according to the survey of CBI, around 59% of the employers are offering teleworking facilities t its employees, which shows 13% rise compared to 2006. However, the Telework Research Network reports that only 2.5% of the employees prefer teleworking excluding unpaid volunteers and self-employed (Ryan, 2013).

The secretarial or Administrative works are providing full time homeworkers constituting on 24% in total. The Sales and customer service takes up low home-worker that of only 2%. According to the figures disclosed by the government, real estate is the business that is uptaking teleworking more that is 24%, then the construction field with 14%, manufacturing with 11% and also the education sector with 11% (Flexibility.co.uk, 2014).

In conclusion, this report highlights the concepts of teleworking and also the addresses the concerns of the top management of Talk Talk. This report discusses the issues that the organization can face while implementing the teleworking process and also demonstrates the advantages and disadvantages of using the teleworking process for women and disabilities in the organization. Before ending the paper, the report produces the growth opportunities that the teleworking services are receiving. Teleworking is a good practice benefiting both the employees and the employers. But, as the organization can face various issues associated with the process, the managers need to identify and draft specific policies and guidelines. These policies should delineate the delivery schedules, work timings, reporting guidelines, code of conduct and also performance evaluation criteria. These would help to solve the issues of teleworking practice. Further, including encryption process, digital signature would help to solve the issues related to security.

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Baruch, Y. (2000). Teleworking: benefits and pitfalls as perceived by professionals and managers. New Technology, Work and Employment, 15(1), pp.34-49.

Basole, R. (2008). Enterprise mobility. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: IOS Press, pp.80-100.

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Jackson, P. and Wielen, J. (2002). Teleworking. London: Routledge.

Johnson, M. (2013). Teleworking. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.

Nemati, H. (2008). Information security and ethics. Hershey PA: Information Science Reference.

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Scholefield, G. and Peel, S. (2009). Managers’ Attitudes to Teleworking. New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 34(3), pp.1 – 13.

Talktalkgroup.com, (2015). TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC. [online] Available at: https://www.talktalkgroup.com/ [Accessed 9 Feb. 2015].

Valmohammadi, C. (2012). Investigating the perceptions of Iranian employees on teleworking. Industrial and Commercial Training, 44(4), pp.236-241.

White, R. (n.d.). BACKGROUND DOCUMENT N: A LITERATURE REVIEW OF ASPECTS OF TELEWORKING RESEARCH. [online] eci.ox.ac.uk. Available at: https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/40house/background_doc_n.pdf [Accessed 9 Feb. 2015].