The concept of working from home instead of in your city centre based office is not new but the slow take-up of flexible working arrangements by companies has started to raise questions.
The benefits of home working for employees and employers are certainly real and impressive with the employee being able to fit their working life around their personal needs whilst being either a reduced or even non-existent participant in the daily commuter chaos that is both stressful and tiring.
Less commuting means less congestion and less carbon emissions which has also got to be good news with some estimates that a significant part of the government’s carbon reduction target could be delivered simply by maximising home working – no need for congestion charging or road pricing and all the pain that accompanies these new taxes. One multinational that has embraced flexible working estimates that its employees save on average 12 million litres of car fuel a year – reducing C02 emissions by around 15,000 tonnes per year.
For employers, flexible working arrangements from home mean happier existing employees, improved recruitment options for new employees and reduced office costs. One employer that has put their money where their mouth is has been BT where 70% of their 100,000 employees now work flexibly with over 10% being entirely home based. The result for BT has been a 20% increase in productivity, 63% reduction in sick leave, a maternity retention rate of 99% vs a national average of 47% and a reduction in office costs of over £350 million so far. With benefits like that why aren’t more companies promoting flexible home working?
One reason is certainly political – for all the fine words about reducing congestion the truth is that an employee who is spending 2 hours a day commuting to and from work is generating a lot of tax revenue in the process – certainly a lot more than the employee who simply walks down the hall to their home office. The multinational employees above who are saving 12 million litres of car fuel a year are also reducing the tax take by the Treasury by around £7.5m. The lack of political enthusiasm for flexible home working indicates that saving the Earth is not quite as important as the generation of tax revenue!
However the main reason seems to be due to management fear – a recent survey of 300 HR directors commissioned by Inter-Tel Europe, the business communications provider, indicated that 93% would not trust their employees to work flexibly from home. This is in spite of citing benefits of greater productivity (47%), reduced stress (62%), higher workforce motivation (60%) and happier workers (50%) – effects that you would expect most HR directors to enthusiastically embrace.
However this contradiction is understandable according to Neil Sheppard of Res Consortium which specialises in developing management skills to create high performance businesses.
He says “Moving from a traditional business model with everyone working on a site to a looser business structure with team members working remotely with flexible hours is an unnerving step for many managers but it needn’t be.
Most sales managers, for example, have managed this way for many years – it requires clear objective setting and the development of deeper levels of trust between managers and their teams which can be achieved by good training. Many managers think that if you let people work from home then they will simply waste their time – the truth is that if they will do that at home then they are probably doing it in the office already which is a management issue that needs to be addressed.
I recently saw a posting on an Internet chat forum during the working day that said ‘my manager is currently looking at me and smiling – he thinks I’m working hard but we all know differently don’t we?’ This worker is clearly abusing his employer’s trust regardless of where he is working. With the right training managers can become much more comfortable with the concept and everyone benefits”
Modern information and communications technology is also a great enabler of this revolution. Commenting on the above HR Director survey, Chris Harris, managing director of Inter-Tel says “Given that flexi working can engender higher productivity and motivation it’s very disappointing to see that companies are still sceptical about adopting new ways of using technology because of trust issues.
This schizophrenic attitude towards flexi-working seems to stem from the fact that HR directors are unaware of how to track the way flexi-workers spend their time. When asked how they would monitor the performance and productivity of flex-workers 18% said that they had no idea. In reality most companies have the technology already on site – they just don’t have the know-how or time to exploit it. Speaking to a specialist provider will help to allay their fears and find a solution that meets the business needs.”
Happier workers, better staff retention, higher productivity, lower costs and helping to save the Earth – one great example of information and communications technology enabling environmentally friendly change that also improves the quality of peoples lives.
Article kindly provided by Res Consortium
Res Consortium is a performance improvement organisation working with both public and private sectors to develop their people, teams, processes, systems and structures to improve their value creation capabilities. For more information on how Res Consortium can help your organisation please contact enquiries@resconsortium.com or visit www.resonsortium.com
Sep 20, 2006
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