Background

HomeWorking - the future or the present?

Commercial Drivers

  • Reduce / Eliminating cost
  • Extended / Improved Customer Services
  • Drawing employees from a greater area
  • Improving retention
  • Reducing absence
  • Maximising skills and potential of employees
  • Facilitating organisation and facilities redesign
  • Better application of current technology
  • Health & Safety / Data protection and Others
  • Information security
  • Improving work-life balance

Political Drivers

  • Improving social inclusion
  • Supporting rural regeneration
  • Reducing impact on the environment
  • Supporting life-long learning
  • Employment legislation
  • Meeting public sector service targets

Many organisations are under pressure to deliver improved services with fewer available resources. The focus has become rationalising resources and realigning them to provide better services at lower cost. Some of the necessary elements are in place but the operational and physical infrastructure are often at odds with the needs of the organisation and its customers.

Extended hours of access coupled with the requirement for policy driven issues such as: carbon footprint, work-life balance, social inclusion etc, have potentially opened the way for more flexible, less geographically specific locations for work to be carried out. An extreme example would be off-shoring, but for most organisations embracing home working for its existing employees is seen as a more strategic and politically acceptable decision. One of the potential benefits of wider adoption of home working is the release of real estate from ownership to liberate capital sums or the reduction in rented space to lower overheads. There are other potential benefits such as productivity gains, reduction in absenteeism and staff retention.

The challenge is to move this thought process on beyond a few ad hoc early adopters into a scalable and fully managed function for large scale use, whilst capitalising on the benefits accrued to the organisation. Building the business case for this wider use of home working is often difficult for the executive in any organisation. Recognising the current situation; the future objectives and mapping out a route between, that successfully delivers appropriate actions, financial consequences and a time line, remains out of reach because of existing commitments, a lack of detachment and the necessary experience.