John Linton
...is more possible now than ever in the past for some types of 'white collar' work but is it actually beneficial to either the 'work from homer' or for the entity that employs them? From the time Exetel was brought in to existence it has had employees 'working from home' - Exetel commenced operations from a room in our house and Steve worked from his house in Perth and didn't come to Sydney for a month or so from our start up time. The programmer who wrote all of our initial systems didn't some to work at Exetel's office until we first had a semi-formal office in March 2004. The first four Sri Lankan employees we had started by working from their homes for over two years before we established a presence in Colombo and two of our Level 3 support personnel have never worked at the Exetel office except for their initial familiarization and training always working from their own homes in the ACT and the NSW Central Coast respectively. I work from home more than 50% of the time and Annette seldom goes in to the office at all.
So Exetel is fairly experienced in understanding the basic merits and de-merits of employing people who work away from other employees for considerable amounts or 100% of the time over a period of over five years - we have no problem with either the concept or the actuality and have a more than a reasonable knowledge of the up and down sides and other issues.
Exetel re-look at this scenario every six months or so and I raised the issue again last week after I had filled in a survey/questionnaire some weeks before for some government department whose name I can't remember and thinking the questions being asked were incredibly naive and/or incredibly doctrinaire though it was hard to tell whether they may well have been both. I think they were doctrinaire rather than naive as, at least as far as I could see, they seemed to assume that it was preferable for people to work from home under all and any circumstances given that there was a very short section, essentially one question, along the lines of "do you think there are any circumstances where working at an office location provides more benefits to the employee than working from home - there wasn't even a reverse question asking whether there were any disadvantages to the employer if the employee worked from home....doctrinaire?....I think so.
However after I answered the survey as it didn't take much time and it was getting round to the time to reconsider this question again anyway I subsequently received a telephone call late last week thanking me for submitting the survey (perhaps very few people did?) and asking me some follow up questions including expressing surprise that we already had such a 'policy' in place and had done so for such a long time 'for so many staff'. The follow up questions were not very sensible or even sensibly structured but I answered them as patiently and politely as I could for some 30 minutes and eventually had to say I had no more time after the questions became more and more intrusive.
I think the 'surveyor' became very frustrated with me because I wouldn't agree with any of her survey's "suggestions" on the benefits of someone working from home from the employer's view point. Even though Exetel has highly automated systems and, in comparison to any other entity I know, extremely advanced communications systems there are virtually NO advantages to an employer for employees working from home under any circumstances other than one, perhaps one and a half, - and, personally, I think there are many, many disadvantages to both the employee and the employer.
The 'one' advantage to the employer for 'allowing' an employee to work from home is that it allows an employer to employ people in diverse geographic locations if they can't find the 'talent' they need within a reasonable traveling distance of the place they need them to work. This is obviously the case with Steve (who lives in Perth and comes to Sydney for a few days each month) and mostly for Annette as she started doing work that was 'part time' and needed zero interaction with anyone else. It was also obvious for the initial employment of personnel in Sri Lanka. Our two Level 3 support engineers were hired in a 'conscious' experiment to determine whether it would work for support to be remote from Sydney prior to our final decision on moving all support to a different country.
And that's where the matter rests today for Exetel.
The ONLY reason that I think is beneficial for an employer and an employee for the employee to work from home is when a changed travel distance, time and cost become a factor in the employee's life and the employer doesn't want to lose their talents, skills and knowledge. This can happen in any number of ways (some completely rational, or almost, some quite irrational but that's humanity for you) but the end result is the same - an employee whom the employer values is under the burden of excessive travel time (and sometimes cost) which is not a good situation - for either party. I don't take this in to consideration when hiring new employees because I , personally, have always recognised the fact that you should never hire anyone who has to travel more than 45 minutes to work - though I do understand that as cities such as Sydney have grown so big geographically that has to be increased - it actually doesn't change the fact that is highly undesirable for both parties.
The nice government survey lady couldn't understand how I couldn't see all her other benefits but actually saw separation from co-workers as a massive social minus as opposed to the four walls and 'limited' human association of the employee's home as THE major disadvantage - particularly for the young age demographic that applies within Exetel.
So I suppose the net of my view is that people should select jobs that are as close to where they live as possible and that an employer may mutually agree with an employee who is valuable to the company that they should work from home if they end up living (for whatever reason) so far away that travel is a negative factor in their lives and therefore in their job performance.
Maybe I won't fill in the next survey - my answers appear to be as 'helpful' to the 'government' as my answers to their paid maternity leave survey.