Abstract
This study investigates mechanisms underlying the influence of telework on labor productivity in Japan. First, this study finds that appropriate telework hours increase labor productivity, but when telework hours are too long, telework decreases labor productivity. Second, telework increases life satisfaction, and life satisfaction improves labor productivity. However, telework increases the stress of balancing work and domestic chores, contrary to Japanese governmental expectations, and the stress decreases life satisfaction. The stress, fortunately, does not directly reduce labor productivity. Although telework increases happiness and work satisfaction, these factors do not influence labor productivity. Third, this study clarifies that telework is more efficient for improving labor productivity if workers commute more than 1 h or commute by trains or buses that are usually very crowded during rush hours in Japan. Finally, the effect of telework for workers who have a greater number of potential trivial duties is insignificantly larger. Supervisors and colleagues often ask others to perform trivial, extra tasks without regard for schedules. Telework may help workers avoid such trivial duties and increase labor productivity. However, the importance of trivial duties is also demonstrated in this study.
1. Introduction
Japanese society promotes telework1 because this practice encourages women and elderly individuals to work, which helps compensate for the nation's labor shortage caused by its declining population. Telework allows parents to balance work and childcare or elder care for a family member and revitalizes rural areas far from the job opportunities of urban areas. According to the 2016 Japanese Communication Usage Survey, only 13.2% of firms have introduced telework, despite the survey reporting that average productivity in Japanese firms with telework is high; furthermore, 43.4% of them reported that less than 5% of employees perform telework. Teleworking has been less popular even in Europe (less than 6% in France and approximately 6% in Australia) and the United States (15%–24%), since its first appearance in the 1970s (Aguilera, Lethiais, Rallet, & Proulhac, 2016, pp. 1–11). One reason is that managers doubt whether telework increases labor productivity (Aguilera et al., 2016, pp. 1–11).
6. Conclusion and discussion
This study investigates mechanisms underlying the influence of telework on labor productivity in Japan. Specifically, this study examines (1) the effect of telework on the stress of balancing work and domestic chores, happiness, life satisfaction, and work satisfaction and then the influence from those factors on labor productivity; (2) the effect of reducing commuting time and stress from the commuter rush; and (3) the effect of avoiding interruption at work by performing telework. Additionally, this study first examines whether telework hours increase labor productivity by using a fixed effect model to remove the influence of the unobserved individual characteristics.
