February 2003
Research and Teaching

Home working given thumbs up

"Working at home means longer working hours but can greatly improve quality of life and work-life balance," says Dr Peter Hopkinson of the University's Department of Environmental Science.

His comments are based on a survey of nearly 2,000 British Telecom teleworkers for SUSTEL, a European Union project on sustainable teleworking, conducted in conjunction with the Centre for Economic and Environmental Development.

Email and advances in wireless technology are enabling more employees to work remotely. This has led to forecasts of a surge in the number of teleworkers this decade, particularly those who work while on the move or alternate between home, offices and clients' premises.

Industry analyst IDC has predicted that about two-thirds of the US workforce could be mobile by 2006. In the European Union, the number of teleworkers could treble to 27 million by 2010, according to a recent study by the European Commission-funded Emergence project. In the UK, the number of teleworkers has risen by 65% in four years.

Although working from home appears to point to longer working hours (more than one in five of those surveyed say they even work at home even when too ill to travel to work) most of those questioned said that quality of life had improved.

SUSTEL Co-ordinator Professor Peter James said: "The main benefit is greater control of time and working conditions."

Almost 80% said they have flexibility about where they work and the biggest reason for teleworking is to get more work done. One respondent said: "I can sit down at midnight for three hours and concentrate, and lie in bed the next morning if I wish."

Another stated: "The creative period that occurs for me naturally is in the evening after a glass of wine".

Most respondents considered themselves more productive: "I'd forgotten what it was like to read documents without my fingers being in my ears."

Working from home appears to be good news for both workers and for employers. For example, the survey shows that teleworking can cut car travel and enable some groups, such as lone parents or people with a disabled dependant, to remain in employment.

But the report also points out that some north Europeans may be critical of the finding on longer hours, seeing it as evidence that teleworking intensifies the UK's culture of excessive working hours, while making it marginally more tolerable.

A minority of respondents also identified other negatives.

One claimed: "Loss of social interaction is demotivating and can be depressing."

Others noted isolation, concerns of reduced chances of advancement because they are less visible, guilt, or pressure to prove they can work as well as they did in the office. Some even said teleworking had a negative impact on their quality of life, mainly because of longer working hours.

The report adds that: "In the longer term, some of the perceived advantages, such as less interruption by interaction with colleagues in offices, may have a downside of less effective distribution of knowledge, and/or sense of commitment to the organisation and colleagues."

Peter Hopkinson concludes, however, that: "Most staff find that any negatives are more than outweighed by positives and are seen as reasonable trade-offs for the flexibility which teleworking can bring."

These findings will now be compared with research in Denmark, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands to assess the environmental and social benefits of teleworking.

• The report is available at www.sustel.org

11 February 2003

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