They say nobody ever wishes they'd spent more time in the office. But does there have to be such an emotive conflict between work time and personal time? Work-life balance is currently a major theme of employment legislation and HR best practice, and you're just as likely to hear it debated around the water cooler as in Parliament or at the CBI. It's an issue that affects all of us, and one of the most practical ways to address it is remote working.
Home working is the obvious example, and one with special work-life benefits. Commuting time is subtracted from the working day; household chores and personal appointments can be fitted around working hours instead of needing time off; and family commitments needn't be a barrier to full-time employment. But remote working can also mean operating from satellite offices, from partners' or customers' sites, or on the road. What all these scenarios have in common is the requirement for technologies to connect the remote worker. Some combination of phone, text, email, videoconferencing, and access to central applications and data will be an essential foundation.
Employee benefits
While many employees need no persuading of the benefits, there are equally clear incentives for employers. Without the distractions of the office, productivity can often rise, and reducing the number of desks in the workplace can bring significant cost savings. Looking ahead, flexible working practices are increasingly seen as a mark of the progressive and responsible employer. The Government has set out a work-life agenda for all employees and especially those with families or other dependents. Everyone has the right to ask for flexible working, and it's likely that employers will face increasing pressure to agree to it. Enabling remote working is a relatively straightforward, cost-effective and productive step in the right direction, whether or not this is its primary purpose within the organisation. And when the economic climate discourages generous pay settlements, the ability to offer flexible working can be a powerful tool for staff motivation and retention.
Regulation and best practice also recognise the increased autonomy that comes with working outside the office. Remote workers may be exempt from some or all of the provisions of the European Working Time Regulations, which some employers have found burdensome. While staff in the office naturally look to managers to structure their workplace and daily routines, remote workers tend to be pro-active in creating a pleasant and practical working environment within their home and imposing self-discipline to organise their day.
Effective remote working
Among managers, remote working traditionally raises the spectre of invisible staff whose contribution can't easily be measured. But this needn't be the reality. For many employees, whose working day typically revolves around the computer screen, email and phone, a change of location has little practical impact either on the way they work or the criteria on which their performance is judged.
THUS offers a comprehensive range of solutions to enable remote working in the ways that best suit your organisation. Ensuring your remote workers can access all the information and communication channels they need, whenever and wherever they need it, should be the goal. Home workers can be equipped with cost-effective broadband connections for secure access to corporate systems as well as the Internet. Laptops and other devices can be fitted with WiFi for use in the growing number of wireless hotspots and, to keep users connected elsewhere, with 3G cards that transfer data via the mobile phone network. In the next issue of Fusion, we'll look more closely at how these technologies can be matched to your workers' needs.