John Linton
I noticed this reference in the SMH this morning and it was also in the on line version:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-great-sydney-exodus/2008/03/02/1204402275498.html
which effectively says 22% of Sydney's population is thinking of moving somewhere else because of travel times and general living costs. I've always been aware of travel time to and from work ever since I made a 'lifestyle decision' when I worked for IBM in Melbourne in the 1970s and chose to live some 30 miles NE of the Melbourne CBD in the tiny 'settlement' of Panton Hill which had a post office/general store/petrol pump, a pub and a one teacher primary school and maybe 150 people scattered around on 5, 10 and 20 acre blocks or on real farms.(10 'miles' further out than Eltham itself regarded as 'rural' in those days). It took me a hour or so on a good day to get to work leaving home at 6.30 am and about the same to get home if I left after 6.30 pm. These days the traffic would be far worse and such a decision would probably be impossible - but I haven't lived in Melbourne for over 30 years.
I notice that a fair number of Exetel's employees live in suburbs whose names I haven't heard of and tell me it's not uncommon for it to take them up to 3 hours of travel time each day to get to and from the North Sydney office. This lengthy travel time was, partly, why some two years ago we began the process of putting in place abilities for people to, truly, work from home on a full time basis. At that time Steve,who lives in Perth, spent two weeks of every month working from home, Annette seldom comes in to the Exetel office and I work several hours each day, and all weekend days, from home.
We hired two engineers in Sri Lanka in February 2006 and that has worked out very well - we have hired two more Sri Lankan engineers who will come to Australia next week for a three week initiation/training session. For the first time in late December/early January we 'advertised' (on our forum) for additional support engineers and gave the opportunity for applicants to work from their homes and be located anywhere in Australia. Today, the first person hired on that basis will commence his familiarisation training in Sydney before returning to work as a support engineer from his home in the ACT.
As Steve, Annette, me and the two engineers in Sri Lanka have noticed there is no difference, in terms of access to systems or people (each has a VoIP handset connected to the office Mitel PBX) whether you are in the office, at home, or in some other country. The 'face to face' social interaction is the only thing lacking in this method of working. The obvious advantages in the saving of travel time and cost (and greenhouse emissions) are key positives for both the individual and the employing entity.
So, I guess, this means that Exetel is 'future proofed' against the talent/skill drain that is being pointed out in the SMH article but perhaps there is something more than that - why do people still have to travel to work in some far away place that takes so much time away from their lives and is so pointlessly costly to so many people and the planet itself?
Habit? "It's the way it is?" Fear of lack of dedication by 'remote' employees? ......etc, etc....appear to be the only reasons.
Is there really any reason why Australian employers in non-process/manufacturing 'industries' should continue to set up their operations in central locations in big cities?
When we complete the first phase of GURUS and when we decide on whether or not we will move our current operations to the CBD to accommodate our need to reduce data centre costs maybe Exetel wil become one of the first/the first? Australian company to have the majority of its personnel working from home.