Hosein Rahmanian, spokesperson for the Administrative and Recruitment Organization of the country, examined the philosophy and history of the telecommuting regulations in Iran and discussed its necessities in terms of increasing productivity and reducing commuting. These regulations were approved in 2010 and are considered part of the e-government project. According to Rahmanian, telecommuting is not just a welfare solution but allows employees' duties to be performed without physical presence and within a specified period.
Challenges of implementing and culturally adapting telecommuting
Rahmanian pointed to the existing obstacles in fully implementing the telecommuting law and said: "Although this law has been approved, it has not yet been fully operationalized." He identified weaknesses in digital infrastructure and the culture of presence in the workplace as some of the reasons for this. According to him, some managers still evaluate employees with a traditional mindset, believing that an employee must be present in front of the manager for their performance to be assessed. Rahmanian emphasized that a performance system based on data and performance is not fully available, which is one of the fundamental challenges in implementing telecommuting.
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Telecommuting experience during the COVID-19 pandemic
He also referred to the telecommuting experience during the outbreak of the coronavirus and noted that this method was implemented more widely for the first time in 2018. Rahmanian added: "To prevent arbitrary implementation of telecommuting, it was decided that employees would work remotely for six months and be evaluated based on their performance."
Rahmanian further discussed the reforms made in 2018 in the governance structure of telecommuting and stated that these reforms granted more authority to the heads of each organization to determine jobs suitable for telecommuting. He emphasized that necessary indicators should be established to identify telecommuting jobs to make the implementation of this law more effective.
The necessity of cultural development in telecommuting
Rahmanian talked about the statistics of government employees and the need to improve the accuracy of statistics using contractual and temporary workers. He stressed the need to create supervisory mechanisms and added: "On the sidelines of the last government meeting, the Vice President presented a plan to be communicated to the government, which included new components to address the implementation challenges."
He highlighted the importance of cultural development regarding telecommuting and said: "The mindset of managers and the work culture in this area need work and modeling." In his opinion, the optimal model that the government envisions is a combination of in-person and telecommuting activities, and attention should shift from "presence" to "productivity and results of activities."
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