THE TELEWORKING TREND – WHEN WILL YOU JOIN?

Teleworking as we know it today involves working from the comfort of your home, or out on the road, using remote access solutions to connect to your office network. The idea of working from home seems a dream. Well it’s not a dream and many organisations are setting up the connections to enable them to do so. Last year, approximately 12% of the UK workforce fell within the description of a “Teleworker”. That’s about 3.5 million people!

What are the benefits?

The benefits of Teleworking are well known and we are able to provide everything needed to allow remote accessing within organisations. Organisations already allowing full time Teleworking, using homes as administrative bases, claim to have increased productivity. Work Wise found that BT strongly implements home working, resulting in a 20% increase in productivity. Organisations also have lower office space costs, and are able to retain active workers by giving them a flexible and desirable lifestyle. Workers are motivated when allowed to work in the comfort and familiarity of their own home.

Additionally, workers benefit from an enhanced work-life balance, along with added health and leisure benefits. Their working hours are extremely flexible enabling them to do things they wouldn’t normally do, like collecting their children from school. Groups such as mothers, who wouldn’t normally be able to maintain full time jobs, are now able to through Teleworking.

With the issues of global warming, energy saving and excessive oil use becoming more apparent, Teleworking can be advantageous. Daily commutes to and from the office are costly, especially with petrol prices increasing dramatically. The cost of travelling to the office could be as much as £20 per day, thus considerable savings can be made.

What are the problems?

Although it seems there are only benefits to remote working, Teleworking is yet to really take off. If both organisations and workers save money, and time, whilst saving the environment, why aren’t more people Teleworking? The technology is readily available to connect workers to office networks, allowing full use of the network’s email and enterprise applications. Only 3% of managers are worried about the overheads for setting up a Telework centre; costs are not a barrier.

The main problem is awareness of the ease of Teleworking. Raising employers’ awareness of what Teleworking can offer is what needs to be done. Employees continue to execute tasks in a professional manner, merely from an alternative location.

“The passage to Telework as such, because it only modifies the way in which work is performed, does not affect the Teleworker’s employment status." (DTI Teleworking Guidance, agreed by CBI, TUC and UK).

Isolation of workers can be problematic with remote workers, but the recent increase in broadband use in the UK counteracts this and compliments Teleworking. Technology is sufficiently available to ensure employees can email, phone, or even video conference with colleagues in the office. Simply put, a balance needs to be struck between time spent working in the office and working remotely.

Additionally, organizations have been reluctant to implement Teleworking schemes because of the administration, cost and support needed to do so. Set-up of the necessary equipment requires knowledge and professional expertise

WHAT IS THE CURRENT TELEWORKING TREND?

Currently, Teleworking is on the increase, but at a relatively slow rate, a trend which is similar to that seen at the time of introduction of the Internet and of Internet credit card use. Problems existed to begin with such as high costs, limited technology, and trust issues. With the development of technology, these flaws were overcome. An Internet connection is now available to almost everyone. The Internet allows us to browse a world of information. With the introduction of social networking sites and video hosting communities, reasons to gain Internet access have increased.

With broadband becoming more accessible, Teleworking should follow a similar pattern to that seen of broadband use.

Similarly, credit cards are often used for purchases online, now that security issues surrounding web payments have been resolved.

“Among Internet users, the highest percentage shopping online is found in South Korea, where 99 percent of those with Internet access have used it to shop, followed by the UK (97%), Germany (97%), Japan (97%) with the U.S. eighth, at 94 percent. Additionally, in South Korea, 79 percent of these Internet users have shopped in the past month, followed by the UK (76%) and Switzerland (67%) with the U.S. at 57 percent.” (Nielson Global Online Survey)

Both of these ideas took off at a phenomenal rate after the problems were overcome and perceptions changed. The Teleworking trend is expected to follow a similar pattern; technical, cost and security problems have been resolved, and all that remains to change are attitudes, which are now being informed by experience. For example, the National Work from Home Day on May 15th helped to increase the number of individuals successfully experiencing Teleworking.

All these ideas primarily offer “ease of use” and cost efficiency. The increasing availability of the Internet is likely to influence and shape the number of individuals working remotely. Networks are now more accessible than ever, and organizations are beginning to take advantage of this.

However, a recent survey from vunet.com has shown that 29% of managers believe they shouldn’t offer Teleworking to their employees because they will simply “spend all day in the pub”. This issue of trust is a problem which needs to be overcome. Set company policies may help rectify this issue.

What’s ahead?

Work management in Teleworking is one of the worries preventing Teleworking from following in the footsteps of Internet take-up and Internet credit card use. Once overcome, we can expect Teleworking to follow the trend thus leading to a massive increase in the number of people Teleworking as a part of their job. Once awareness has been maximized and attitude problems with Teleworking are gone, there is nothing left to say but “why not?”. We can expect to see people working on their laptops in the local parks and cafés, enjoying their job as well as increasing productivity for their organization.

We at Keyfort are able to provide a complete solution to those organisations who want to offer remote working to their employees. The solution includes a seamless installation, proactive support, a constantly up-to-date security system and consolidated billing. All of these things are essential for effective and efficient Teleworking, and Keyfort is your single point of contact for all these needs.