The Home Working Revolution
by Claire Burdett
There are currently about three million home-based workers in the UK. That’s a lot of people working from their kitchen tables, and if the government has anything to do with it, it’s set to rise even further.
So why, exactly, is it such a Good Thing?
OK, hands up, I work from home and have done on and off since the children were born. In my time I have worked in some pretty full on and high-pressured jobs, the sort where you frequently start before breakfast and don’t get home before midnight, if at all.
Now I work from home as a writer and run Funky Angel for business mums and working parents, especially those working from home. All you 21st century families, in fact. When I add it up, I still put in a lot of hours, probably not far off some of the old high-powered jobs of the past, but the difference now is that I work from home, so while the work and the pay are comparable, the whole experience is very different.
Unfortunately working from home still retains a smidge of the old “stereotypical view that [it] is predominantly undertaken by mothers with young children, the under-qualified, and members of ethnic minorities" as Alan Felstead, Nick Jewson, Annie Phizacklea & Sally Walters put it in their ‘A Statistical Portrait of Working at Home in the UK: Evidence from the Labour Force Survey, ESRC Future of Work Working Paper no. 4’. However, the study, which was carried out be Leicester University, refutes this, finding that people who work from home are, in fact, often highly educated and well paid.
And happy, healthy and wealthy, I might add. Our Funky Angel 2007 survey into the levels of happiness, health and wealth of home workers were higher than the general population, with:
• 81 per cent of the 466 participants claiming to be in great shape - 24 per cent said they were bright eyed and bushy tailed and 57 per cent said they were healthy but knackered.
• 50 per cent saying that they were generally happy or very happy, 22 per cent said that they were content.
• 54 per cent said they were financially comfortable or managing, with only 8 per cent reporting that they were struggling, and most of these commented that it was because of the feast or famine syndrome, early-stage own businesses, or solo parenthood.
Yet for many people, especially employers, working from home still smacks of skiving off doing a ‘proper job’, even though studies bear out what my own experience tells me – that it can increase productivity. It also carries many additional bonuses, such as:
• Helping cut down carbon emissions because it reduces commuting.
• Reduces the costs of running huge offices because employees can hot desk when they need to come into the office for meetings.
• Reduces stress caused by the high cost of commuting and fulltime childcare.
• Utilises female intelligence and experience that might otherwise be lost once children arrive.
As an extra bonus, working from home also means you don’t have to spend great chunks of leisure time doing housework, because five minutes here and there throughout the day when you need to think how to word something, or what those statistics actually mean, or you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, can cut down the time you have to spend doing it at the weekend.
However, it’s not all roses. The downsides can be:
• Isolation. You have to make an effort to connect with people, it’s not like you are able to wander to the water cooler for a quick chat. You may also be shocked by your colleagues (negative) reaction.
• The need for a dedicated working space, even if it is just the garden shed.
• Family stress. While it’s good on many, many levels, not least because you see each othr more, and can cook and eat together, it’s not going to work if your partner suddenly expects you to become super-housekeeper and five star cook and bottlewasher just because you are ‘working from home’. I also think it can be difficult with the under fives in the house, but that is from personal experience and I do know people who manage it, and manage it well.
• You will tend to work more. Fact. As an employee, guilt and gratitude can mean you put in far more hours than you would if you were working in the office. You may also lose track of time without colleagues around you to remind you its lunch or home time, and you may not be able to resist “just checking my emails” in the evening or at weekends, and bang there goes another three hours. If you are running your own business from home, everything mentioned goes double, even triple. Sometimes it can take broken limbs and blood to get your attention. You have been warned
• Self discipline. You will not be a popular person if you don’t do your job, so the question about how self disciplined you are should be honestly answered right at the beginning. At this point, daytime television always enters the conversation (for the record, I’ve never watched it), as does whether I spend all day in pyjamas (no, I think it affects my self image, and therefore confidence and ability to do my job, plus it scares the milkman...), or spend all day drinking coffee with my friends (if only I had time...).
As for employers, they need to consider how they will monitor their home workers’ outputs, the level trust they invest in their employees generally, and what sort of company they actually are before they commit to home working as an option.
As a general point, some work just can’t be done from home, nor would you want it to be. Home working, like all work solutions is also something that should be regarded as a flexible option because sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t, and why that is depends on the worker, the boss, AND the work.
Let’s be brutal here. A rigid company, the type that wants employees visibly tied to their desks and is suspicious that employees are always “taking the Michael”; that is driven by people hitting quotas and the process of doing something, rather than servicing the client and focusing on the end result; the type of company that has a top-heavy hierarchy that holds all the power and allows the workers very little flexibility or control, while passing the responsibility straight down the line, is very unlikely to be comfortable with home working employees, regardless of whether the actual work is suitable for home working or not.
A company who is flexible and supportive, on the other hand, who seeks the best people, as well as the best from people, and tries to inspire them at all times; a company that likes self-starters, encourages input from its employees and trusts them, and couldn’t give much of a monkey’s about how things are achieved as long as they ARE achieved, and well. A company, in short, who values its relationships, whether that’s with clients or employees, as well as its achievements and bottom line, is likely to already be employing flexible workers and home workers, and therefore enjoying all the benefits that go along with that.
So to answer my original question, why is home working a Good Thing? Because working from home, if you are the right person in the right place at the right time, with the right employer and job (whether you are the boss or not) is one of those win-win situations that very rarely happen.
And that is something to celebrate. Happy National Working From Home Day!
© Claire Burdett
