Quocirca's Straight Talking: Teleworking - get it right

Businesses are both gung ho and hesitant about allowing employees to work from home. What's the key to getting it right? Quocirca's Rob Bamforth has some advice.

When Charles Handy first wrote The Age of Unreason and The Empty Raincoat - books about the changing workplace in the mid-1990s - he described a future where work would be far more flexible in structure, hours and location. In reality, businesses may not have evolved completely into "electronic shamrock organisations", as he theorised, but for many work is no longer just a place to go but something they do at home or while out of the office.

Working from home does not suit all roles or all individuals, and when it was first discussed most employers and employees considered it to be a binary decision - teleworking full time from home or working full time in the office. The reality is that increased job and employee mobility, both from having to travel to perform working duties and having to travel greater distances to and from the office, requires we all take a fresh look at home working to reduce the travel burden.

Recent research presented by the Institution of Civil Engineers in its State of the Nation 2005 infrastructure report estimates the cost to UK business of increased road congestion is around £20bn per year. Considering what's at stake it's not surprising the issue has plenty of advocates. The Country Living lifestyle magazine, for instance, has just joined forces with industry advocate Business in the Community to embark on a campaign with the UK's largest companies to reduce 'work miles' - the daily commute.

An incremental approach to teleworking, which has an element of partial home-working, has positive benefits for both organisation and the individual.

Firstly, the business. Encouraging staff to take work home or be in communication by phone or email extends the working day and is often seen as a way to increase productivity. This is the number one factor behind home working for UK-based enterprises, according to recent Quocirca research, although some softer benefits are also noted - such as flexibility of office space, positive impact on the environment and in particular reduced staff turnover.

Offering flexible working hours will often improve motivation and morale but even with 'core' hours where everyone should be in the office, providing complete lines of communication and service coverage can be difficult, especially in increasingly 'lean' organisations. Extending flexible working to outside the office ensures key employees can be reached, business processes run unhindered by gaps in workflows and crucially allows employees more control of their own time. From the same Quocirca research, we found this control is an important factor in personal productivity for almost 80 per cent of employees.

There are negative viewpoints too and these must be addressed. Employees feel they are working longer hours and resent having to take work home with them. What starts out as a way of eliminating the need to drive to the office for meeting can quickly turn into a chore if the expectation is late-night answers to emails. This is exacerbated if it becomes necessary to dedicate a permanent space in the home for working.

From a management perspective there is also a fear that employees will spend too much time fiddling with their novel devices and be side-tracked from the task in hand. This isn't an ungrounded fear. For some the distraction of a glance at a pocket-sized mobile email device is compelling, even if it interrupts other work. While laptops are great productivity tools, a room full of employees in a meeting with open laptops does not generally mean they are all taking notes on the meeting but often doing email or other work. This does little for the overall value of the meeting.

Management is the key. Most enterprises see security and confidentiality as very important inhibitors to increasing home working but the research also points to widespread concern about the loss of management control - and the impact of home working on the organisation's culture and identity. Despite the concerns and need to adapt, home working will continue to play a substantial role in businesses, with over a quarter of UK enterprises believing that over half their staff would benefit from access to business IT and communications while at home, and a similar number believing this figure will increase.

Technology is changing the working environment, and in order to ensure the impact on productivity and personal satisfaction remains positive, will require a different approach to management. We might not have a completely empty raincoat but at least the hat and gloves are off.

Details on the responses to our survey and further analysis can be found in our Transforming the Workplace report which is freely available for download from the Quocirca website.