The Chymical Mix

I’m sitting here in the office of a company for whom I am working as a contract technical writer, covering maternity leave. I am facing the window, which is good for taking the regular breaks from the monitor screen that are recommended by the health and safety guidelines. When I look out of the window, I see the air traffic flying in and out of Manchester airport, just a mile or so down the road; the window opposite has views towards Alderley Edge. All in all, a reasonable location, you might think. However, my home is in Bournemouth, not Manchester. I spend the week living in a rented room. My question is: Why am I forced to work in this office for no good reason, when I could do the job perfectly well in my home office, probably more effectively? I’m not talking about the odd day at home when the weather is bad, or every Friday, as is becoming quite common, but full-blooded home working, where you only go to the company office if there is a good business reason.

If there is any job that is tailor-made for the so-called working from home revolution, it has to be technical writing. Of course, there are times when you do need to be in a specific location. For example, when you are gathering information for a maintenance manual, it is a really good idea to have some hands-on experience of the product, working alongside the expert engineers to gain as much insight as possible. However, for software projects, everything can be done on a computer. Even control software often comes with a simulation rig, so that you can try out user interfaces in isolation from a machine. Meetings? Video conferencing is now routine. Being embedded with your fellow project team members? I am often working on projects with a distributed team, who are on different continents, never mind in different rooms. Despite this, for some unknown reason, most companies have chosen to ignore the many benefits of telecommuting and insist on their office workers being in a specific location while doing their work. Why? I have never received a convincing answer from any employer.

I know that working from home is not for everyone. Many people have a sense of isolation, and lack the discipline to organise their time effectively. However, for those of us for whom these factors are not an issue, there should be the flexibility to work where we want, when we want. It is easy to fit in meetings that take place during standard office hours, without having to work standard office hours.

Over the ten years that I spent happily working from my home office for a number of enlightened companies, the only issue that I ever came across from my fellow workers was one of distrust: Was I doing my job, or was I in the garden sunbathing on sunny days, a beer to hand and a smirk on my face? Note that the issue never arose with my peers, it was always managers, because they did not know how to cope with someone working from home. My reply to their query was always the same, framed in more questions – have I ever missed a meeting, failed to respond in a timely manner to enquiries, caused a deadline to slip, or produced work to an unacceptable standard? No, I had not. Monitoring employee performance is easy, whether they are in the office or on another continent. Trust should not be an issue. If work performance is up to standard, location should be irrelevant in the majority of cases for “office” workers.

I should point out that our American cousins are much more relaxed about home working. I have worked for two US-owned companies where my manager was based in the USA. Neither had any problem with my home working. By contrast, I have worked as a contractor in two companies where my US-based manager was keen to employ me on a permanent basis. Both times, I was contracting as a home worker, going into the office when there was a good business reason. On both occasions, the local management blocked my permanent employment unless I was office-based. When I investigated further, it turned out that it was basically envy. Nobody had any problems with my work or communications, they just did not want anybody permanently employed to work from home.

The advent of modern technology should be an empowering process, not an enslaving one. It should be easy for us to take control of our work and fit it around our personal lives, not have itintrude on our personal lives. Instead, our employers are subtly finding more and more ways of making us work longer hours than ever before. Have this laptop, they say, you’ll be able to do half your day’s work on the train journey, and if for any reason you can’t make it into the office, you can work from home. Great. So, you can work from home when it is convenient for them, so why can it not be a general choice? So, you work on the train, leaving your working day to do the other, er whole day’s work. Ever known a company let you commute 2 hours each way to work, with your laptop, then spend only 4 hours in the office? Thought not…Have this blackberry, they say, then you can always pick up your e-mails, wherever you are. Yes, even at weekends, or when you are on holiday. If you have the temerity to ignore your blackberry at home, or while you go on your holiday, watch out for the negative comments when you get back to the office. Work to live, not the other way round. Technology has been corrupted to enslave us, and many of us embrace our enslavement. I think this is the real reason that employers want us in one location, so that our herd mentality and competitive instincts conspire against us, encouraging a culture of long hours. Let’s be honest, if you weren’t in the office to see Joe Bloggs working late again, would you feel guilty that you were leaving on time?

One day, employers might look at the research that shows the benefits of fully flexible employment. Employees who can choose when they work their hours, who can work from home unless there is a specific requirement, and who are freed from micromanagement, are happier employees. They are off sick less often, feel more loyalty to their employer, are more willing to work those extra hours near a deadline, and have a healthier, happier home life. Research also shows that working long hours rarely leads to increased efficiency; instead, working efficiency drops alarmingly. 7 or 8 good hours a day is far superior to a debilitating 10 or 12 hours. Efficiency also drops off before the first 8 hours of a long day, when you know that you have those extra hours to do. In economic terms too, the company benefits by having a smaller suite of offices and more productive workers, which more than offsets the home working infrastructure costs.

In the wider economy, the benefits flow too. With approximately a third of the workforce currently working from offices, home working could have a huge impact on transport and the environment. Less traffic on the roads, less crowding on trains, easier access at the supermarket and gym (yes, we will go shopping and do our exercise in the daytime if we work from home, but we just start work earlier or finish later, or just work when we would otherwise be commuting). This would in turn have a significant impact on traffic emissions, which has to be a good thing.

OK this rambling is nearly over. I just want to leave you with two visions of my working week…

Office-based: I travel up to Manchester late Sunday afternoon, travelling 250 miles away from my family to stay in a rented room. During the week I cook for one (luckily I do cook, otherwise I would be living on cook-chill meals all week!), don’t see my family and friends, and have no access to the comforts of my home. I have arranged my working week so that on Friday I work just 3 hours (a division of the working week that was squeezed grudgingly from the employer), enabling me to travel the 250 miles back home from mid-morning onwards, thus avoiding the worst of the traffic. Saturday I get the day with my family, except of course my children have a life too, so I often feel like a divorced parent with access every other weekend, losing touch with what is happening in their lives. Suddenly, it’s Sunday morning, perhaps time to enjoy a walk and a leisurely coffee with my beautiful wife, before the cycle repeats.

Home working: I basically choose to work Monday to Friday between 8am to 6pm for my contracted 37.5 hour week. Of course, when the situation requires it, I have no problem working additional hours and have the beneficial situation that after I finish work, I am already home. Between those hours, I have a nominal 12.5 hours outside my working time. This is spent efficiently, not on long lunch breaks, but on weekly food shopping, exercise, and those little everyday tasks like housework, meaning that I have more leisure time in the evenings and at weekends to spend with my family and friends. No need to make up working time lost for appointments, staying in for a delivery, or anything like that. I can keep up with everything going on in my children’s lives while we share a meal together (well, what they choose to disclose, they are teenagers after all), plus I have a whole weekend to enjoy before work starts once more.

I rest my case.