Working From Home

Introduction -allowing and encouraging your full-time or part-time employees to work from home, can have huge business benefits, as well as improve the productivity and motivation of your employees. As small business firms seek new ways to reduce their overheads in a difficult economic climate, teleworking and homeworking provides the ideal opportunity to cut costs, while recruiting and retaining remote workers. This article explores the practical and commercial issues and opportunities with teleworking and working from home, for both employers and employees...

Home Working Workforce Trends -in the 1960's, the workplace culture generally meant that managers expected their staff to be at their desks by nine, and work until five. Home working was almost unheard of. Larger and more established businesses, tended to organise their gradual expansion around the physical headquarters building, and grow with branch offices based in local markets. As the population of many Western countries grew, the daily commute to the office began to cause huge traffic congestion along major transport links. Indeed, the planning process of governments and local authorities, orientated themselves around the needs of business and their workers.

People moved into cities where the jobs were located, causing mini property price booms in areas where industry, business and commerce were physically based. However, over the last 30 years or so, the amazing advances in computer and communications technologies, have provided an opportunity employers to organise their teams and businesses functions differently. Virtual teams can be established, exploiting high speed broadband, mobile technology, videoconferencing, e-mail, instant messaging, telephone, fax and shared data services. In the United Kingdom, there are already 3.4 million people working from home, and this is set to increase to 20% of the population by 2012. Many of these workers spend the majority of their time working from home, while visiting their office once or twice a week to catch up with other team members and their boss. Employees attitudes are changing too. Many are starting the seek a different 'work life balance', compared to previous decades.

Many are choosing to work more flexibly and take advantage of the possibility to work from home and vary their hours of work. Consequently, to attract and retain staff, employers are offering more flexible employment positions; with combinations of job sharing, home working, compressed hours, flexible hours and part-time hours.. There has been a huge cultural shift in the mindset of business owners and managers, to encourage, promote and facilitate homeworking.

Managers and business owners are primarily exploiting new technologies to cut office based overheads. In addition, flexible home working also solved the growing problems of retention of skilled labour, increased demand for flexible working hours and poor productivity due to commuting delays. Business technology now means employees are potentially contactable, 24 hours a day. However, while there are obvious benefits for employees choosing to work from home, business technology is also causing additional work related stress for employees. With rising redundancies and overseas competition for jobs, stressed out and pressured staff, regularly choose to take work home with them. Sometimes the culture within an organisation that exploits home working, is that their employees should be 'seen to be available', using their laptops, mobile phones and PDA's, outside their normal and contracted working hours.

Jobs and Skills Suited to Working from Home -some types of jobs, and some types of people will not be suited to working from home. For instance, hairdressers, builders or any direct contact trade that requires employee to be ' on site', can not be based from home. However, many administration and service-based jobs, can easily be located from home. These include, customer services roles, telesales, administration processing, accountancy and sales and marketing positions. Home workers also need to to have the right skill sets and aptitude, to be able to successfully do the jobs from home. They need to be motivated self-starters, who given a remit and a set of objectives, can work independently of other team members. They will also need to have a basic aptitude for information technology, such as teleconferencing, videoconferencing, e-mail, data sharing and computer application software.

Pros and Cons of Working from Home - from the employer's perspective, there are a number of quantifiable business benefits for implementing a homeworking policy. The main advantages are as follows:-

• Higher Staff Retention - many employers allow their staff to work at home for part of the week, which provides the flexibility for employees to manage their time more effectively. Happier and more satisfied staff reduces staff turnover. This is reduces the cost of recruiting and training new employees, to replace disgruntled ones, (fed up with commuting costs and wasted time). In addition, employees who subsequently become parents, may find their working hours may conflict with their responsibilities to look after their children. Allowing them to work from home for some or all of the time, avoids staff leaving for more local or flexible job alternatives. Likewise, by offering a homeworking position, an increased number of people are likely to be interested in applying for a job opening, (such as disabled people).

• Office-Based Cost Savings - home working reduces the traditional cost of office space. This includes office furniture, office maintenance support, office rents and rates, lighting, heat, health and safety, security, etc. While there are additional employer costs, of an employee setting up a home-based environment, these are usually significantly cheaper than the traditional office based environment.

• Reduced Carbon Emissions - more homeworking means more employees travelling less, and polluting the environment less. Many businesses are attempting to behave ethically, in a way that reduces its carbon footprint. In addition, Governments and local authorities are beginning to create green taxes (such as levies on road tax and recycling), which affect small businesses. For those businesses that provide transport facilities for their staff, home working provides an opportunity to reduce harmful emissions, as well as avoid Green taxation.

• Improved Employee Productivity - employees are more relaxed in their own home environment, while saving hours commuting each day. There are also many interruptions in a busy office environment, such as the office banter, time spent in regular team meetings and requests for assistance from co-workers. The time wasted during these face-to-face distractions, mean employees can be more productive, concentrating on their own core responsibilities and tasks. Another important aspect of productivity relates to sale based employees', ability to be near to their key customers. By employing home-based staff, located near to key suppliers or customers, more customer facing time replaces unproductive commuting time.

The main advantages for employees' are as follows:-

• Flexible Part-time Hours - the increases in the cost and standard of living, mean that many working families with young children, are now dependent upon both parents income, at the same time. This growing wealth means that mums who need or choose to re-enter the jobs market following the birth, will usually do so on a part-time basis in the early years. Employers are increasingly finding that by offering a more flexible working from home job role, working parents have more flexibility to choose. In particular, parents can top up their income by placing their children in nurseries or with a childminder some of the time, while working part-time at home for the rest of the week. By working at home, it usually means that the parent is closer to their local nursery or childminder for drop-offs and collection. This avoids unnecessary commuting costs and time (associated with working in a distant office environment).

• Less Sickness and Stress - many studies have concluded that long commuting creates stress, and affects the well being and happiness of workers. Employees are more relaxed in the home environment, while saving hours each day to use as they see fit. In addition, in a large busy working environment, sickness bugs can spread rapidly, particularly via air-conditioning systems. Home based workers are less likely to contract illnesses from their co-workers (who are office based), reducing levels of sickness absences.

The main disadvantage of home working for employers, is a loss of management control. Managers need to have a good understanding of how well their staff are performing and meeting their job-related targets. If employees are struggling to adapt to the change, it is imperative to receive feedback to ensure that corrective management action can be taken. Sometimes, additional training may be required for employees who not very IT fluent. Communicating using telephones and videoconferencing is not always as effective as a face-to-face meetings. So much communication is non-verbal and people naturally need to be told they have done a good job and had the full support of their boss. It is also much more difficult for the manager to assess how well the employees coping with their work objectives, as there is much less contact. If the manager has a team of people all working from home, it is probable that weekly team meeting would be via a teleconference. This does not provide individuals with the potential chance to air their grievances, or discuss potentially private issues with their manager such as salary, and targets. Less well motivated staff may feel isolated without the constant reassurance from their employer that they are doing a good job. Likewise, some human resource issues, (such as disciplining an employee) can be highly sensitive, and require face-to-face meeting to discuss the issues involved.

IT and Logistical Issues of Working from Home - employers must provide an employee with a safe and functional home office environment. Employers are likely to need to source; a desk and chair, lockable filing cabinets, shelving, a computer with pre-installed of application software, secure e-mail, dedicated telephone broadband connections, office and stationery, and a printer and fax machine. In the UK, to comply with the Data Protection Act, it is sensible to provide a copy of the security policy, and instructions for employees to ensure that any data held at their home, is appropriately protected. This may mean insisting on fireproof, lockable filing cabinets as well as secure computers, which are controlled with password access, and protected with the latest firewall and antivirus and spyware software. To comply with Health and Safety regulations, employers will need to carry out a safety risk assessment, as well as consider employers liability insurance. In particular, any furniture and chairs provided, need to be compliant and ergonomically orientated. Any computer monitors provided should also have suitable antiglare screens provided, to protect employees eyes from long term damage. Employers will also need to check wherever their existing business insurance policy covers equipment based at and employees personal address. If not, the policy may need to be extend to include this type of cover. Employers should also recommend to their employees that they should check with their local council, whether or not business rates apply to the proportion of home used for business.

Legal Issues Related to Working from Home - as an employer, you must include the employees physical place of work within their employment terms and conditions. Changing the role of an office based position to one which is based, working from home, also has contractual issues. In particular, you will need to obtain specialist legal advice to clarify:- working hours, responsibilities for looking after home-based equipment, security policies for protecting sensitive data. In addition, you may be legally bound to formally consider employees requests to be based at home, from parents with children or carers seeking flexible working hours.