Are you sitting comfortably?

Today is the UK's National Work from Home Day.

...So then, sofa-slackers, hands up who watched Jeremy Kyle, just switched over from  Countdown, and now counts down the minutes until Neighbours?...

...Moi?! Oh, of course not! But unfortunately, such an imagined scenario is still a vision that haunts employers around the world and is something that's hampering HR's and employers abilities to offer generous flexible working policies to employees. Despite various reports of the clear benefits to businesses of offering work-life balance options, plenty of CEO's are understandably nervous about the more obvious time-wasting and other negative effects that such policies could encourage.

Work Wise UK argues that working from home helps millions of workers around the UK avoid the fight through over-crowded public transport or frustration from sitting in traffic jams, and they save a few hours in time and are able to start work un-flustered and un-stressed. It also says that:

"Working from home, even occasionally, would greatly enhance people’s work-life balance, and improve employee relations. The reduction in commuting alone could save people several hours per day, freeing up time to spend at home with the family or on leisure activities. British workers spend by far the longest time travelling in Europe – as much as 47 working days per year" (Samsung Research 2004).

So, what do you reckon? Flexi-time: good or bad?

Soundtrack for the blog posting: Supergrass - Sofa of my Lethargy

Comments

[Martin Ross]

There's a much bigger point here. The quality of stuff you do from home is better than the quality of stuff you do at work. This is because, put simply, the workplace sucks. Paul Graham, as ever, nailed this:

"The average office is a miserable place to get work done. And a lot of what makes offices bad are the very qualities we associate with professionalism. The sterility of offices is supposed to suggest efficiency. But suggesting efficiency is a different thing from actually being efficient.

The atmosphere of the average workplace is to productivity what flames painted on the side of a car are to speed. And it's not just the way offices look that's bleak.

To me the most demoralizing aspect of the traditional office is that you're supposed to be there at certain times. There are usually a few people in a company who really have to, but the reason most employees work fixed hours is that the company can't measure their productivity.

The basic idea behind office hours is that if you can't make people work, you can at least prevent them from having fun. If employees have to be in the building a certain number of hours a day, and are forbidden to do non-work things while there, then they must be working. In theory. In practice they spend a lot of their time in a no-man's land, where they're neither working nor having fun."

It's a great post - http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html

[Annie Waite]

Hi Martin,

That the quality of stuff you do from home is better than the quality of stuff you do at work is a valid argument for some people I should think, but certainly not for everybody.

In my experience, there's a lot to be said for having others around to bounce ideas off, check facts, earwig on client developments etc, that all round help you become better informed. The flipside is when you really need a quiet few hours to concentrate hard on something important, the typical office environment of ringing phones and a multitude of different conversations certainly isn't the place you're most likely to be working at your peak - that's when the occasional working from home session works wonders, I find.

Thanks for the link ...I like Paul's comment about meetings being "relaxing"!