MATiSSE Smarter Working
Smarter Commuting - Working from Home |
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Why Work from Home? (Click to find out why home-based working was 'Taylor Made'
Often the stress of the daily commute is greater than the stress in the job itself. If you are one of the many peak-time commuters in the South East regularly caught up in daily peak time congestion, there is another way...and that's working from home one or more days each week. Fortunately, more and more employers, like Business Link, are helping their employees achieve a better work-life balance by offering permanent or occasional home or local smarter working centre or satellite office working. For employers, it helps to both retain and attract (happier, more valued, lessed stressed) key staff and can boost competitive edge through the increased productivity that is usually achieved by home-based workers. At the same time, business travel and accommodation costs can be reduced, there are considerable environmental benefits (less CO2s), no peak-time travel congestion, whilst staff well-being is improved. For individuals, the opportunity to work from home may simply mean (as a maternity returner or carer for instance) you can return to the job-market.
BT, leads the way in the statistics of maternity returners increasing the percentage of those returning from 47% (Above the 41% average) to now a staggering 99%! For the majority though, it represents a more family-friendly way of working, which together with flexible hours, helps meet both work and family commitments.
Starting the Dialogue
Moving to home based or more flexible working practices involves managing people, property, IT and communications differently. For many large organisations, it is precisely the contemplation of this change that can act as a brake to implementing Smarter-Working across their organisation. As delegates at MATISSE Smarter-Working events regularly hear, successful, fulfilling Smarter-Working is about more than just giving people a broadband connection at home.
It’s about deploying the right combination of network infrastructure, tools and support for managers and employees to be effective wherever they are working. It also involves and requires health and safety and legislative compliance – and often a thorough review of existing processes and outputs. Above all this is the need for many organisations to recognise that the move to home based more flexible ways working is primarily a cultural change demanding all the skills of a properly executed Change Management Programme to succeed. Success is built around empowering employees and results based performance management, a million miles away from the control and command (presenteeism) culture still stifling the productivity and potential of many organisations.
For more information guidance visit the MATiSSE and Business Link home working pages
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