Working from home?

Added by The Editor, 2 months ago.

View Comments (8) | Leave Comment

In case you missed it, last Thursday was National Work at Home Day in the UK. Did you observe the day - or did you spend it chained to your desk as usual?

Whatever your answer, organiser Work Wise UK, a not-for-profit initiative of the IT Forum Foundation, insists that organisations need to adopt smarter working practices today if they are planning to compete in tomorrow's global economy.

"Smarter working has been shown time and again to increase staff productivity and reduce costs, as well as improving staff wellbeing and providing a better work-life balance," said Phil Flaxton, chief executive of Work Wise UK.

Although the actual proportion of the UK workforce which currently makes use of smarter working practices is not clear, home workers ‑ defined as "people who work mainly in their own home, or in different places using home as a base" ‑ is known to be 3.1 million out of 28.76 million, or 11 per cent of the total workforce, according to figures from the Office of National Statistics. Work Wise UK believes that this can be extended to 50 per cent of the workforce within five years.

Significant technology investment will be required to reach that goal - or get anywhere near it. As the physical office becomes less essential to a worker's productivity, organisations need to address (UC)unified communications such as voice, internet and mobile solutions.

Access to corporate email alone certainly won't be enough to meet the needs of a new breed of remote worker, according to Logicalis consultant Mark Adams. Companies need to seamlessly deliver all enterprise voice, video and data applications to ensure maximum productivity away from the office, he says. And the time to start planning for that is now.

Comments

There are currently 8 comments about this blog.

Mandy Shaw, about 1 month ago

Victoria, while I am 100% convinced of the benefits of unified communications technologies to business, and not just for home workers, I feel that these technologies need to be integrated, automated and simplified, and people's concerns about the security of their personal information allayed, if take-up is not to remain limited to the young and the technologically savvy. In our own organisation, a sizeable minority communicates only via email and mobile 'phone. Both of these technologies provide the ease of use you mention, and these individuals simply don't see any benefit in presence and instant messaging. When we first implemented Sametime, many years ago, its use spread like wildfire - but only to a certain point (probably about 30% of the workforce). Some people don't like the visibility; some people just don't see the point; some people can't cope with the technology; some people see it as allowing others to chat in work time; and some people (and this should not be discounted, I have heard it several times) are really bad at typing quickly and understandably don't want others to be aware of it.

Victoria, about 1 month ago

I’ve just been reading about Microsoft’s move into unified communications (http://gigaom.com/2008/05/29/microsoft-echoes/) Although it’s nothing new (look at Skype) I think this industry shift towards UC and using address information or names to call people is far easier than remembering several numbers (landline, mobile, home number for when working at home etc.) and it’s this ease of use that will, in all likelihood, drive take-up of these services.

Jane S, about 1 month ago

I've worked from home for 5 years now, and the first thing people ask is: 'How do you motivate yourself'? The answer is simple: 'if I don't do the work, I don't get paid'! In my experience, office workers often see working from home as 'day off', but that's probably because it's such a novelty. The entire culture needs to change, and that can only be done by trying it. If working from home was a (more than) weekly occurrence, I'm sure employees would quickly realise that assignments and projects need to be finished regardless of where they are working.

Victoria, about 1 month ago

The Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) has just published a report on “smart working” (carried out by Capgemini), which argues that there is a new “organisational paradigm” emerging based on changes to the employer/employee relationship and new ways of working (such as virtual team-based working or home working). This report is the first phase of a bigger project. Anyone interested in giving their input in the next stage of the research can find out more at http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/corpstrtgy/orgdevelmt/_smrtwrkgdp.htm

Jon Wright, about 1 month ago

I think the expectation that 50% of the workforce will become homeworkers in five years is completely unattainable. Mandy is contractually home based and still finds IP telephony and videoconferencing are only of 'usable' quality. Does the WorkWise UK prediction even take into account the possibility that broadband speeds might slow down, with more users downloading and uploading bandwidth-intensive content? I'm not against homeworking per se, but I think organisations really need to consider exactly how feasible it is to have employees permanently home based before heading down this route.

Mandy Shaw, about 1 month ago

As someone who is contractually 'home based', some responses to Victoria's and Louis' comments. Firstly, you have to accept that not all home environments are conducive to home working - you have to be able to separate yourself from the rest of the household during working hours; I have personally always found this difficult. Also, the effectiveness of business systems, when used from home, varies widely. I can remember an application which took 15 minutes to load over a dial-up line. It's an obvious point that morale and productivity are totally dependent on both the business process and its supporting application systems being designed or tweaked to cope with distributed working and broadband connections. In response to Louis' point concerning expense, we find we can support all our home working, including IP telephony and videoconferencing in usable if not brilliant quality, over ordinary broadband connections. Finally, do not underestimate the amount of specialised 'phone support home users will require with their distributed setup.

Louis France, about 1 month ago

Will there be any network performance issues if large proportions of the workforce start logging in from home? Also, how expensive are unified communications nowadays? Have they come down in price or is UC still very much targeted at senior managers who work from home compared to the rest of the workforce?

Victoria, 2 months ago

I'm a big advocate of working from home – but what shocks me is the number of large organisations that think employees who work from home are basically taking a day off! As any home worker will tell you, home workers often achieve a lot more out of the office than in. It's like flexible working in that regard – until organisations start appreciating output rather than hours we'll remain stuck in the Dark Ages (regardless of the emerging technology that makes flexible and home working even easier).