Teleworking: Inspiration or Isolation

An article in the latest issue of People Management reports that almost a third of UK workers believe they would be more inspired if they worked away from their office.

The figures come from a survey by T-Mobile of 1,025 office-based employees. It found that given the choice, 23 per cent would like to be able to work from home in the future. Perhaps not surprisingly, the survey found that other desirable work locations included the top of a mountain (4 per cent) or a beach (3 per cent). Altogether, 65 per cent of workers said they would like flexible working options in the future.

While working from the beach may be fun, it does have some practical implications. But home working is certainly much more common, in part due to improved access to high speed Internet. Other considerations such as traffic congestion and rising transport costs are also helping to fuel an interest in remote working (teleworking).

A European funded research project, SusTel, was set up in 2002 to look at the sustainability of teleworking. From their UK case studies, the project concluded that teleworking improved work performance, reduced stress and other ill health, and improved quality of life. However, although these benefits outweighed the negatives, they warned that isolation and other communication problems were the main source of dissatisfaction, and that working hours actually increased.

In colleges, we have little evidence of any major shift towards teleworking, although a fair number of members will work from home on an informal basis. However, we suspect that this is largely driven by excessive workloads. We therefore urge members to contact us if teleworking becomes an issue so we can ensure it is introduced by proper agreement.