Telecommuting has become all the rage over the past half decade for companies that can pull it off with some or all of their employees. About 37 percent of US companies have adopted some kind of flexible work arrangement, and that rate is reportedly growing by 11 percent each year. While the health, life, and work benefits for those who can telecommute are undeniable, a new study says the practice is actually having a negative effect on coworkers who still have to fight morning traffic or jostle for a seat on the subway, also known as "those left behind in the office."

Until now, virtually all of the studies performed on telecommuting have focused on the benefits for employees and their employers. Timothy Golden, associate professor in the Lally School of Management & Technology at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, sampled 240 professional employees from an unnamed medium-sized company to observe how telecommuting affects employees who stay in the office. Golden found that in-office employees took less satisfaction in their jobs and felt less of a relationship and obligation to their company as the number of telecommuting coworkers grew. In-office employees in his study became disappointed at having fewer and weaker relationships. They also got frustrated at a perceived increase in workload and difficulties that telecommuting can present to finishing projects and building strong working relationships.

On the bright side, Golden also says that keeping a close eye on various aspects of telecommuting can potentially help stave off the negative effects on in-office employees. Managing the amount of time coworkers telecommute, having face-to-face interaction, and giving job autonomy can all potentially improve in-office coworkers' job satisfaction and company relationship. Requiring at least some office time for telecommuters, especially those in a team-based environment, could help balance the freedom that traveling employees enjoy with the relationships and traditional in-office requirements many environments may still require.

In my experience telecommuting for a few publications and working in environments that had telecommuters, I've seen a few pros and cons. Requiring telecommuters to come into the office at least once or twice a week definitely helped with interoffice relationships and building a functional team for projects. There are just some aspects of people and relationships that don't translate well, if at all, to e-mail, IRC, and instant messaging. But in some of the telecommuting positions I've had, I still found it possible to build a fairly strong and even fun team relationship by being smart about how we communicated over e-mail lists and via group chat. Enforcing things like specific work time and casual, personal time in the chat room did wonders for working when the time called for it, and yet joking around and getting to know each other when we were off the clock, so to speak.

That said, perhaps the most important takeaway from Golden's initial findings is that telecommuting isn't an exact science yet. It may work for some companies who implement face time for at least part of the week or month, while employees at another company may simply not be interested in letting their coworkers roam free. For those of you who either telecommute or work with telecommuters, how is it working out?