You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
‘Telecommuting’ refers to workers doing their jobs from home for part of each week and communicating with their office using computer technology. Telecommuting is growing in many countries and is expected to be common for most office workers in the coming decades. How do you think society will be affected by the growth of telecommuting?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
You should write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer 1:
It is true that telecommuting has revolutionised our life on many ways. In my opinion, I believe that telecommuting has both positive and negative effects on our society.
On the one hand, telecommuting has many benefits on our planet generally and our social life specifically. Firstly, telecommuting could reduce pressure on earth resources. Telecommuting commuters tend to travel less to their workplaces. As a result, this could decrease pressure on urban infrastructures like roads and public transportation services and ultimately could save natural fossil resources and decrease pollution. Secondly, working from home could modify our family relationships. People spend more time with their families and this increase family tidiness and stability. For instance, some social workers link telecommuting with decrease divorce rates in many western countries. It is a very effective way to enhance the performance of the employees and thus producing increased output for a company. This reduces the costs and ensures better profitability. One of the main objectives of technological advancement is the faster and more tasks done per hour. Telecommuting ensures this very perfectly.
On the other hand, telecommuting could have some negative impacts. One problem is that working from home could result in many health problems. Telecommuting forces people to move less and do more desk jobs. This sedentary lifestyle could lead to many health problems like obesity. Another drawback of telecommuting is that it may affect our social life negatively. Working from home without exposure to real work life could reduce people interaction skills and could ultimately lead to social isolation.
In conclusion, it seems to me that the potential dangers of telecommuting on our health and social life are more significant than the possible benefits.
[ Written by – Safa Ahmed ]
Sample Answer 2:
It is true that visual and audio systems of the cyber-space have revolutionised the way of communication in the workplace. People are influenced in different ways as telecommunication technology was introduced in their jobs, and I firmly believe that it not only has been beneficial to trading, but to medicine and engineering.
Obviously, many businesspersons can connect to their partners or customers through the web. They can talk to them via their webcam at their home, without being necessary to appear in their office. As a prime example, a U.S investor can communicate with his partner in China through Skype, and even order and check out the items being bought or sold from home. As a result, he can save the time which is needed to commute between his home and office.
Another field of usage of this technology is in medicine. To have access to the latest information of their patients, many doctors can check them via their personal laptop or cell phone. For instance, as a cardiologist, I have to visit plenty of people every day. Some tasks can be handled from home, like checking of laboratory results; therefore, it is not necessary I stay in the hospital to see them. Had not this technology been invented, doctors would not have saved their precious time.
Lastly, this innovation has tremendously been useful for engineers. Clearly, to design their constructions, they can operate part of their work in their home, while they had to spend several hours a day at their office to observe their project in the past. In particular, my brother who works for a U.S mobile company in Australia can handle most parts of his duty from home, and his manager can see the results on the screen of his computer at the same time.
In my opinion, the society would be greatly benefitted from the gradual increase of telecommuting by the professionals. People will get their necessary services staying from home while the business growth would expand. People would no longer need to travel a long distance to attend a meeting and this will save their time that they can spend with their family members. Thus telecommuting would make a better social bonding hence people would have more spare time to do social activities.
In brief, modernization in computer systems has assisted many professionals to work from their home. From my point of view, telecommunication has been and will become a leading system in many professions, including medicine, trading and engineering.
[ Written by – Rambod Taghaodi ]