Advances in technology have allowed more people to work from home, but will this increase continue unabated?
People Management, 16 Jun 2005
The man opposite is busy editing a document on his laptop; someone else is discussing a business deal on their mobile; while you are replying to a colleague’s email – and it’s 7pm on the commuter train home.
We live in a world that never stops. With technological advancements such as high-speed broadband, wireless access, BlackBerrys and mobile phones, trains, taxis, cafes, and even our own homes have been transformed into virtual offices.
“Technology is breaking the historical link between work and place,” explains Alan Felstead, co-author of Changing Places of Work. In the book, Felstead and his fellow authors Nick Jewson and Sally Walters argue that by “eliminating downtime and stretching working hours, exploding offices offer another way of intensifying work”.
But they believe that while computers, mobile phones and the like are essential to the effectiveness of remote working, technology is a necessary, rather than sufficient explanation for the change.
“In terms of our evidence, the two factors that were prominent in employers’ thinking were the need to economise on property costs and the desire to promote greater work flexibility and social interaction,” says Felstead.
Even at Microsoft, where you would have thought technology ruled, flexibility is a key driver. “The whole people vision at Microsoft is about creating an environment where great people can do their best work. Part of that is about giving people the ability to work flexibly,” says Vicky Millar, senior HR consultant.
This has become particularly pertinent as the company recognises it has an ageing workforce. “The average age in Microsoft UK is 35, which might seem quite young, but five years ago it was late twenties,” Millar explains. “We now have a lot more people who have young children, and one of the ways to help them is through remote working.”
This is enabled by the provision – for all employees – of high-speed wireless broadband access at home; smart phones, which allow emails to be checked on the move; and Tablet PCs.
While not every organisation is able to embed remote working into its culture as easily as Microsoft, there is certainly a growing trend, particularly towards homeworking – or teleworking as it is sometimes referred to.
According to the 2002 UK Labour Force Survey, the total number of teleworkers in the UK is 2.2 million, which equates to about 7.4 per cent of those in employment – an increase of between 65 and 70 per cent since 1997.
What the numbers do not reveal, however, is the complex nature of the issue. The CIPD’s 2005 Flexible working: impact and implementation survey revealed that while 48 per cent of organisations allowed homeworking as an option for some of their staff, only seven per cent allowed it as an option for all staff. And a study by the Office of Central Government in February last year concluded that one of the primary barriers to change was bosses not knowing how to manage workers at home.
According to Rebecca Clake, CIPD adviser, organisation and resourcing, clear communication channels and effective management practices are crucial. At the heart of this is the issue of trust: the need for managers to trust their employees to work effectively even if they are “out of sight”.
Alexandra Jones, senior researcher at the Work Foundation, says this requires a shift from command and control to more “empowerful forms of management”.
But this is not easy because, as the authors of Changing Places of Work explain, presence and visibility form the basis of most managerial strategies.
One option, of course, is for “big brother”-style surveillance – emails and phone calls can be monitored, while computers can be adapted to count the number of keystrokes or measure activity speeds. An even more Orwellian choice is for webcams to be placed on computers, enabling managers to “spy” on their staff.
But, as Jones points out, such extreme strategies are based on the misconception that because you can see someone tapping away at their keyboard they are actually working.
Clake suggests that the focus should be on monitoring and measuring via outputs and results “rather than relying on seeing your employee out of the corner of your eye”. But care needs to be taken to ensure that it is quality rather than quantity that is being measured.
Aside from managers having to adapt, Felstead argues that workers must also learn to approach work differently, to make effective use of both their time and space. In particular, they must grapple with the difficulties that a blurring between work and home life can bring.
“In our research, we found some people had reconfigured their workspace to replicate wholeheartedly their office – furniture and decor were 100 per cent office-like. But there were other places where the two were blurred into one,” he says, adding that either set-up can work, depending on an individual’s particular working style or coping strategy.
Of course, homeworking is not for everyone and organisations must ensure their employees make informed decisions about whether it is right for them. At Microsoft, for example, employees refer to an online tool that asks them to think about their job, their style of working and their home set-up.
At the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (see panel, right), employees who are making the transition to homeworking start with one day a week and then move to two days, three days and so on.
“It allows us to see if it’s working for them. In fact, one or two people have come back and said: ‘Actually, two days is all I can do because I need the contact in the office,’” explains David Tidey, head of information systems.
It is precisely because of this need for contact that most people dismiss the death of the office altogether – however advanced technology becomes. “Many people enjoy going into the office, particularly women. It’s a place to meet people, and you are able to form relationships which help to make a business and organisation run well,” argues Jones from the Work Foundation.
Carsten Sorenson, senior lecturer in information systems at the London School of Economics, agrees that people like to see each other face to face. “If you pretend that having a video conference is the same as having a meeting then you are wrong. An essential part of a meeting is the opportunity to socialise and to feel like a group – you can’t do that with a video conference,” he says.
So while the trend towards home and remote working is spreading, Felstead concludes that, for practical reasons, much of this is restricted to certain sections of the labour market, such as professional and managerial workers.
“People must be careful about their heroic forecasts,” he says, “There is a change and it will carry on, but it shouldn’t be exaggerated.”
Do your homework
Since 2000, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has made a conscious effort to encourage and support homeworking.
The biggest area of success has been in the revenues division, which includes council tax and benefits, where there are now 19 employees working from home full-time. In other parts of the council a handful of people work at home full-time, with a much greater number working at home for part of the week.
David Tidey, head of information systems, has been leading an internal group responsible for drawing together guidelines on homeworking for the council. He says individuals and their managers need to consider a number of issues before deciding if homeworking is appropriate.
“You have to ask if people are responsible enough to make the best of homeworking and what effect it might have on the rest of the team,” he explains. “Then there are housekeeping issues, such as accommodation at home and childcare. We want to make sure people don’t use it as an excuse to deal with childcare problems.”
Health and safety also needs attention. In the revenues division, individual risk assessments have been carried out for all those who work from home. But Tidey admits such an approach will not be viable as the trend towards homeworking spreads. “Our people live all over the country, so it’s not going to be possible to go to everyone’s house,” he explains.
So, in the future, a full risk assessment will be carried out in the office for each employee and then, as long as they have no previous history of a problem such as repetitive strain injury, the office set-up will be replicated in their home.
Staff will also be sent on a half-day training course about working safely at home, which will cover issues such as electrical safety, setting up the workstation and taking breaks. While there has been reluctance on the part of some managers to allow people to work from home, Tidey says that on the whole feedback has been positive.
“Team leaders say that staff tend to be off sick less if they work from home; there are also fewer problems with travel delays,” he says. Productivity among homeworkers has also increased by an average of about 10 per cent.
While flexibility is the obvious benefit for staff, in the long term Tidey envisages there will be an impact on the amount of office space the council needs, which will allow for greater efficiency and reduced overheads. “We’re in the early stages at the moment,” he says, “but in the council tax department we have reduced space, and in IT we’ve got a number of people who are hot-desking.”
Further info
• A Felstead, N Jewson and S Walters, Changing Places of Work, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 * www.palgrave.com * 01256 302866
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