With more of their colleagues working at home, the morale of workers who are toiling away in the office is suffering, according to recent research out of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

Assistant Professor Timothy Golden of RPI’s Lally School of Management and Technology studied 240 employees at a midsize technology company and found that as the number of telecommuters in an office or department rose, those who worked onsite expressed more dissatisfaction with their jobs and were less likely to remain with the company.

The study also suggests some steps that management can take to soften the impact of telecommuting on those who come to the office:

• manage and monitor telecommuting time closely;
• maximize face-to-face interaction among employees when
• telecommuters are in the workplace;
• increase the autonomy of employees who remain in the office.

The issues triggered by telecommuting are not likely to go away soon. The Society of Human Resource Management reports that 37 percent of U.S.-based and foreign companies offer their workers some form of teleworking, and that number is growing at a rate of 11 percent a year.