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Working from home may just sound like a license to loaf, but for many large and successful businesses it’s not only employee-friendly but earns valuable brownie points for green awareness. It also means that recruitment for any post can be countrywide. Could it be the way forward for modern businesses? I went to find out.

The growth in teleworking has several drivers. Advances in technology and telecoms have made resources available from home that would once only have been possible in the workplace, enabling many people to work from home with the same capability as when they are in the office.

When Flexible Steel closed down its manufacturing operation in Glossop, Derbyshire, to concentrate on distribution, and relocated to a modern site in Bradford 50 miles away, managing director, Matthew Mayers, wanted to ensure some of its key staff stayed with the company. “We are a pretty simple, straightforward business,” he said, “but we had a particular problem that we needed to address – enabling key staff to remain with the company without needing to relocate.”

Unfortunately, they now faced a two-hour commute along some of the UK’s busiest and most congested roads. Matthew, who had recently joined Flexible Steel from the Australian subsidiary to oversee the change from manufacturing to distribution, understood the all-round benefits of having a good work-life balance for his staff. Unwilling to ask them to relocate, but reluctant to lose key people, Matthew found that technology was the answer.

So when Flexible Steel moved to its new site it deployed a local area network (LAN) around the Bradford site and virtual private network connections over ADSL into the homes of eight staff – the four administration staff and the sales force. The wireless network also enabled staff to use laptops anywhere on site. But it also let the warehouse manager use a wireless handset while he moved around the warehouse managing incoming stock and out-going part consignments to customers. Staff working from home had real time access to all of Flexible Steel’s business applications. This system has enabled Flexible Steel’s administration staff to spend as much as 50% of their time away from the office and still perform their roles as if they were there. On the days when they do travel to the office, they can spend a productive hour or two working from home beforehand to avoid the rush hour. Matthew added: “Our administration staff were people we really couldn’t afford to lose. The technology has meant a seamless transition from our old location and our manufacturing activity to the new location and a different kind of business. We have sales people all over the UK and some won’t come to the office for up to two weeks and yet they can still function effectively with access to all the latest company and operational information.”

Today, Flexible Steel has just 11 staff managing its UK and Ireland distribution business, a sales force of five; four administration staff; a warehouse manager and Matthew. He is confident about the future: “We are looking to double sales in the next year or so and we don’t want to add staff, so wherever there are opportunities to drive efficiencies into the business by using technology then we would certainly take advantage of that.”

Telecoms giant BT has also embraced flexible working, with options that include working from home, job-sharing and part-time positions. One of the first to introduce home-working back in 1986, it became the first company to fully integrate it into its business strategy. Of its 107,000 employees, 70% are flexible workers, nearly 12% are home-based workers and many others are occasional home-workers. Becky Mason, BT people networks manager, said: “Flexible working including home-working is normal practice for BT; it’s just the way we work. We very much believe in the approach that performance is measured on output so it doesn’t matter where someone works from. Individuals apply and this is granted if it is operationally feasible. However, on occasions where we have group moves, i.e. we are moving out of a building or a team or unit and relocating then group property will encourage a certain amount to consider home-working but no-one is forced to work from home.“

The company recognised substantial benefits all-round: home-working is an important option for BT employees to enable them to manage their work-life balance. The company estimates that the annual cost to support an office-based desk-worker in central London is around £18,000 a year, compared to less than £3,000 a year to support a home-worker. Therefore, there are substantial savings to the business as a result of flexible working.

Skills shortages in certain industries, such as IT or investment banking, have also tipped the balance of power towards employees and have encouraged companies to come up with new and more imaginative ways of working.

IGF, one of the top independent commercial finance providers in the UK today, is another pioneer in the home-working field. Loretta Fairley, marketing manager, IGF, has worked for the company for nearly eight years and has always been home-based: “We’re all in positions of a certain level, so we know what our jobs are and we know what we’ve got to achieve and we’re trusted. It’s an open and honest working relationship between staff and management which is healthy and makes people work harder. Saving time travelling is fantastic. It’s very win-win – it’s flexible for me but also for IGF as well.”

IGF has home-based auditors all around the country, all fully set-up with broadband, as well as most of the sales team, who are on the road but have home offices. The company was established in 1997 and delivers a wide range of commercial finance services from invoice discounting and factoring to payroll, asset finance and development loans. Headquartered in Kent, IGF wanted national coverage, without the overheads of opening offices all over the country and forcing employees to travel to and fro from them. Home-working also gives the company a far wider range of staff from which to choose, countrywide, in fact, not just those based within commuting distance from head office. Loretta believes that clients don’t lose out either and that in fact the opposite is true.

“I don’t think that it actually affects the clients at all because they’re still getting the service, they’re still getting the people out to see them and the client portfolio is carved up so that your client manager is the one that lives close to you and you’re going to be able to see them more frequently. Our client base is spread all over the country. We don’t want to have a client in Manchester and have a client manager based all the way down at head office. More and more people are working from home and with the way technology has advanced, it’s making it a lot easier for people to work from home. It’s good all round for the work-life balance.”

But does she have any problems with home-working?

“I find it quite hard to work in an office now – it’s very noisy and you get drawn into different things going on, answering other people’s phones etc. You get more done on your own as you’re dealing with just your own work, but on the other hand you can’t just hop along to another colleague’s desk to sort something out, it has to be over the phone or e-mail so it can take slightly longer to resolve than if you were sat opposite each other.” For employees it can be an isolating experience, cutting them off from the good things that interaction in an office brings: cross fertilisation of ideas; quick exchange of information; brain storming; camaraderie and sense of purpose. For this reason opportunities need to be provided to get the team together frequently.

There may be a perception that home-based working is an easy option and that staff are not as productive when away from the beady eye of their line manager, but even this problem can be overcome by new technology in the shape of Time and attendance (T&A) software.

BT’s policy is also based on trust, however: “Home-workers are treated no differently than other colleagues,” said Becky. “There is no need for additional monitoring processes. The culture we promote is one of trust. If someone is delivering against their objectives then there is no need to record such things. In practice we have found that home-workers work for longer, sharing the benefit of reduced commuting time by working for longer and having more personal time.” Her colleague, Dave Dunbar, head of BT Workstyle, added: “The problem we typically have with our home-workers is stopping them working, not getting them to work harder. BT has over 14,500 full-time home-workers. If we had to house them we would need around 10 additional large office buildings. We know that our home-workers are on average 15% more efficient, that they are more satisfied and that they take over 60% less sick leave, than office-based colleagues. I have been a home-worker for over 15 years within BT and the majority of my team are based at home. BT’s flexible working policy has allowed me to keep absolutely key staff when circumstances would otherwise have meant that they would have to move jobs. That means that I have an absolutely dedicated and focused team which has retained and built on their skills. From my point of view as a manager that makes life very easy indeed.”

IGF also finds it unnecessary to use software to track employees’ work habits at home. Loretta noted: “You get more out of people if they’re working from home. I think managers have to feel very comfortable with the staff they have working from home to make sure that they are competent and 100% committed, but if you’re not, it soon shows up.”

Demand by employees to work at home is set to rise to two-thirds of the UK workplace by 2011, predicts Kingston Communications, which recently found that 37% of the current workforce said they will only consider roles in the next five to 10 years which offer this benefit.

“Home-working has become quite the norm lately,” Loretta suggested, “and it’s the way to go if you look at it from the green angle as well: you’re not wasting resources on the motorway polluting the environment. It’s forward-thinking and it shows faith in the staff you’ve got. I think it sends out a good message that you’ve got good people.”
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Bonnie Yuill
e-mail: bonnieyuill@googlemail.com

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