RSS feedsConcern is widespread among small to medium-sized businesses as the government prepares to extend employee rights to flexible working from next April to include parents and carers with children under 16 years of age for the first time.
The fear is that they will struggle to cope with a flood of requests by personnel to change their working practices and that such moves will be detrimental to their business. Such working practices include moving to annualised hours, flexi-time, part-time working, job-sharing, shift and home-working. But existing legislation currently only applies to adult carers and parents or carers with children under six or disabled children under 18.
According to the Office for National Statistics, about 8% of the total working population, the equivalent of around 2.4 million people, currently work from home or other remote locations. But about two-thirds of them are currently self-employed, while just 4% of all employees operate as teleworkers.
Such staff tend to be managers, work in the professions or in occupations such as field services or sales that are highly mobile anyway. The practice is much less common in office-based roles such as admin, secretarial and customer services, however.
But, although the adoption of such practices is on the rise, there is no evidence to suggest the extension of flexible working rights will lead to them becoming the default mode any time soon.
The labour market outlook survey undertaken this year by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and KPMG indicated that, while 60% of employers now offer teleworking options, more than two-thirds never, or only occasionally, accept staff requests to work from home and there is no evidence to suggest this will radically change.
Flexible advantages
This is despite the potential advantages that employers can gain by introducing more flexible working patterns across the board – where job roles allow. The key drivers behind any such moves to date, says Barry Lane, business development manager at Coventry University Enterprises’ (CUE) eWorking Solutions service, relate to cost-cutting and environmental issues such as reducing the organisation’s carbon footprint.
For example, when CUE introduced a teleworking or e-working policy for its 170 staff in 2002, it saw its own costs fall drastically. While the running costs for each office-based employee previously came in at £6,000 per year, it has now halved for each of the 120 personnel now working regularly from home.
‘Facilities costs are reduced,’ explains Lane. ‘We use less heating and lighting and we’ve also freed up office space so we now receive £125,000 in rental from other organisations sitting in our space.’
Moreover, the move has resulted in 30% less absenteeism, not least because staff are less stressed, more motivated and will often still work from home if they feel off-colour, although they would not necessarily struggle into the office.
James Cole, a director at Cruise118, a retailer that sells cruise holidays, agrees that e-working can be a positive choice. While 12 of the organisation’s sales agents work out of its headquarters in Chorley, Lancashire, another 12 are employed across Northern Ireland and work from home.
‘In the travel industry, the home-working community is saturated in England, Scotland and Wales and so you tend to get high staff turnover. But there’s a niche in Northern Ireland and the staff work hard and are of high calibre. So home working enables us to recruit from a wider geographical area because we’re not constrained by people having to drive into the office,’ he says.
In addition, Cole adds, because the business does not need to rent office space, it saves money there, too. The biggest challenge, however, is hiring staff who want to work from home ‘for the right reasons’.
As a result, the profile of Cruise118’s home workers tends to be more mature staff who have previous experience of working life, are clear about their motivations for choosing this option and are comfortable about being managed remotely.
‘We’ve got quite a few parents so we split the rota so that they can take calls in the afternoons and evenings when the kids are in bed and also at weekends. It fits in well with our call patterns and what they want,’ Cole explains.
New staff members are given a two-week induction course, while conference calls are held weekly to provide sales updates and ‘the focus for the week’. Information is also provided via an intranet site and a local manager makes regular on-site visits.
‘It’s important to have as much contact with people as possible to keep them motivated. For this to be effective, you need tight processes, a good recruitment policy, good communications and IT systems that support home-working,’ explains Cole.
In Cruise118’s case, such IT systems comprise applications that are hosted on central servers and accessed via a broadband link by personnel using laptops. Staff members are also asked to sign a self-certification form to confirm their workspace conforms to proscribed health and safety standards.
Well thought out
But says Lane, strategic planning of the type evidenced by the company is crucial to ensuring the success of any e-working initiative. ‘It can be counter-productive if you don’t get it right, not least because staff in the office can end up feeling put upon if they have to answer the ‘phones or open the post all the time,’ he explains.
As a result, before such a programme is embarked upon, Lane advises organisations to understand what their corporate strategy is, what they are trying to achieve by adopting such an approach and to evaluate individual job roles to establish whether they need to be based in any given geographical location.
‘It shouldn’t be about the individual – it’s about their job role. Once you’ve established whether the role is suitable for e-working, then it is up to the individual. This is because not everyone wants to do it as some people simply enjoy office interaction or their domestic circumstances aren’t suitable,’ Lane says.
The next step is to determine what needs to be put in place technology-wise and in terms of management structure to support such a move. Management is a particularly thorny issue in this context, as such initiatives require a change in style.
Andrew Woolley, a partner at family law solicitors Woolley & Co, explains: ‘It’s about management by outcomes. If people are sitting at a desk, you may know how many hours they’re working, but who cares how long they take if they’re making their figures, the client is happy and it only takes them two hours to do it. Good for them, I say.’
Nonetheless, he says it is necessary to monitor staff activity to ensure they are working as they should be. ‘It’s about ‘trust, but check’ or ‘believe in God, but tether your camel’. To make this work, you need a clear, simple plan so you know where you’re heading, how and why, but you also need to put careful supervision in place,’ he says.
Virtual solution
Woolley set up the virtual firm in 1996 and currently employs 11 other solicitors. In reality, however, points out Lane, productivity tends to rise rather than fall when teleworking options are introduced.
‘There’s a perception that e-working is a chance to skive off. But in reality people tend to work longer hours and have fewer breaks, which is a management issue in itself and so has to be dealt with via training,’ he says.
James Mendelsohn, chief executive of MSI Global Alliance, which manages a global network of 250 medium-sized legal and accountancy firms, confirms that e-working has acted as a productivity booster.
This is because commuting times are reduced, personnel can focus on their work without interruptions and their work-life balance has improved, which enhances motivation. Remote working at MSI is supported using centrally hosted applications that can be accessed by any internet-enabled device running Intercept’s OnlineDesktop programme.
But Mendelsohn believes organisations should be wary of treating e-working as
some kind of ‘mythological beast’ because, in practice, it is simply an
extension of good management practice.
‘If things are going well in the office, they’ll work even better because people
see it as a major perk.
But if problems in the office aren’t being addressed such as people feeling neglected remote working will exacerbate the situation. So it’s about getting the basic management right,’ he concludes.
Legal implications of e-working
Employment contracts
If staff have formerly been office based, any decision to have them work
flexibly or remotely requires amendments to their employment contract as such a
move constitutes changes to their terms and conditions.
Such amendments should state that employees will now be working flexible hours
or that their place of work is now their home. But, in the home-working
scenario, it should also stipulate that they will be required to come into the
office on certain occasions for meetings, training or disciplinary matters. It
should likewise clarify issues such as how to report illness and how to deal
with travel costs
Health and safety
Even if personnel work from home, employers are still responsible for their health and safety and have a statutory obligation to deal with such matters in so far as it is ‘reasonably practicable’.
They are also bound to undertake a risk assessment of their staff member’s workplace, but if this is not possible for geographic or other reasons, can request that they fill out a questionnaire identifying potential danger areas and who, including family members, could be affected by such hazards.
Appropriate action must be taken to reduce any risks, which include ergonomic issues and stress from over-working.
Data protection
If staff members hold personal data, whether on their computers or in paper form, employers must ensure it is properly safeguarded and cannot be accessed by unauthorised third parties because they will be held accountable for any security breaches.
Companies can provide lockable filing cabinets, ensure computers are secured via passwords or other authentication technology and can prohibit employees from using work computers in a personal capacity. Data should also always be encrypted if being sent over a network.
Catherine Everett is a freelance technology and business journalist
