HOMEWORKING IN THE MEDIA
Catch up on all the latest news about homeworking, homeworkers and flexible working. We'll be publishing all the latest press releases here so check back regularly to see what's happening in the world of homeworking.
Responding to reports in Sunday's papers suggesting that Gordon Brown is to extend the right to request flexible working to parents of children aged up to 12, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has called on the Government to be bolder and extend the right to request to all workers.
The reports suggest that Imelda Walsh's review into flexible working is to recommend extending the right to request to parents of children aged up to 12, and that the Prime Minister will embrace the recommendations.
Mike Emmott, CIPD Employee Relations Adviser, said:"We wholly support moves to extend the 'right to request' to more parents. But the government should be bolder still and extend the right to all workers. The danger with ever larger groups of people entitled to request flexible working, and a smaller number not entitled to do so, is that divisions will grow up in the workplace.
"Many enlightened employers already allow employees to work flexibly regardless of their family status. An extension of the right to request to all workers would level the playing field, without compelling employers to offer flexible working where this is incompatible with business needs. Our research shows that it would also deliver improved employee engagement, and therefore contribute to boosting productivity and performance in the workplace.
"The government can rightly claim credit for the light-touch 'right to request' legislation that has encouraged employers to consider employee requests without the need to wield the big stick of compulsion. However, it is a shame that a desire to appease the most vocal in the business lobby appears likely to limit the new extension to flexible working rights to parents of slightly older children than at present. John Hutton gave a clear public signal in February that he wanted Imelda Walsh's review to only recommend a limited extension, so it is unsurprising that this now seems to be what will come out of the review."
The Work Foundation last week published a new essay that asks what is 'meaningful work', why more people seem to be seeking it, and what employers can do to make work more meaningful?
The paper argues that while thinkers and writers have long wondered at the value of work to human beings beyond providing a living, the notion of 'meaningful work' is a relatively new phenomenon that would have made little sense to our forbears of a couple of centuries ago.
Author Stephen Overell says: 'The way people talk about 'fulfilling their potential' in a job could only happen in the modern world of work - it is simply not something that would have been said a few generations ago. Meaningful work rests on the rise of individualism and identity as pressing concerns for large numbers of people. It speaks of huge and perhaps excessive expectations of working life - the historically unusual sense that fulfilment occurs, or should occur, in the everyday, ordinary business of going to work.
'People are very different - what is meaningful to one person may not be meaningful to another, and what someone finds meaningful at the age of 23 may not be how they feel at 43. Nevertheless, meaning is unmistakably in the air of the 21st century culture of work; this essay marks an attempt to describe what is going on. The raising and dashing of hopes around meaning has become one of the major psychological forces within working life. What goes on inside workers' hearts and minds about work has become profoundly important to what they produce and how they do it.'
The essay argues that the discovery of meaning in work relies on balancing three sets of motives. They are moral motives - the idea that the 'ends' of work are worthwhile; compensation motives - including money, but also including status, authority, responsibility and the appropriate use of skills and abilities; and craft motives - the desire to do a good job for its own sake.
Meanwhile, the work that people do today has changed in such ways as to prompt more questions about meaning, fulfilment and rewarding work - relatively well-paying, highly skilled professional and managerial jobs now account for over a third of all jobs in many advanced democracies. Work is more about intellectual problem-solving and how people communicate and relate to each other than it used to be. This does not make work more meaningful, but it helps create the conditions in which issues of meaning and identity arise.
The paper argues:
- Employers have a role in enabling the search for meaningful work by providing high quality jobs for people - jobs with autonomy, security, variety, a reasonable balance between effort and reward, and between skill level and demand. But employers cannot create meaning and should not try to. It is up to individuals to find work that is meaningful for them. However, employers are capable of destroying meaning through exploitation, disrespect, and poor organisation of work.
- Social values that affect work have changed: a basic psychological orientation towards maximising income and status is today being balanced by a stress upon self-expression, diversity of view, aesthetic concerns and issues of self-fulfilment.
- Meaning, identity and individualism at work have risen at the same time as traditional collective institutions such as trade unions, communities and corporate hierarchies are seen has having declined.
- Doing excellent work for no other reason than its own sake is intrinsic to the notion of meaningful work. However, increasing bureaucracy and market forces may undermine the search for meaning.
- Having a sense of vocation is very similar to the idea of doing meaningful work. The difference is that meaning is more self-conscious than vocation: the service of others as a personal experience rather than a 'calling'.
Home Based Working Becoming Commonplace
Britain is turning into a nation of homeworkers. According to home insurance company, Zurich, purely office-based working is moving aside as the nation’s workforce embraces a more flexible working week. New research has found that almost a third of full-time employees surveyed (30 per cent) spend time during the month working from home, clocking up an average of 15.73 hours - nearly ten per cent of the working month - in the home office.
One in ten of the ad hoc homeworkers surveyed spend more than 40 hours each month and nearly one in twenty (four per cent) clock up more than 80 hours working from home. Even those who don’t officially work from home find it difficult to leave the office behind, with one in five (21 per cent) respondents saying that they occasionally check emails or read documents from home.
Avoiding the commute to and from work is the most popular reason for homeworking, with 66 per cent of respondents citing it as an advantage. Peace and quiet from colleagues (55 per cent), freedom to choose working hours (50 per cent), flexibility (48 per cent) and lack of distractions (46 per cent) complete the top five reasons for home working. Those surveyed also appreciate a few home comforts; one in five (22 per cent) welcome the chance for a lie-in, while nearly one in ten (eight per cent) tune into daytime TV during their working day.
The trend looks to become more popular in the coming year, with a third of ad hoc homeworkers expecting to spend more time working from home than they have in the past twelve months. In fact, by August 2008 they expect to be working for an average of 26 hours a month from home.
To accommodate the homeworking boom, many respondents have invested heavily in office equipment for the home, with the average replacement value of these items totting up to an impressive £1,140.93. One fifth (21 per cent) have equipment with a replacement value of more than £1,500. Despite their investment, more than one in ten (12 per cent) don’t have their equipment insured against loss, damage or theft on their home contents insurance.
The top five pieces of office equipment owned and used for work purposes at home are computer (88 per cent); email and internet (77 per cent); printer (47 per cent); USB flash drive (35 per cent) and scanner (21 per cent).
Mark Searles, Zurich’s Managing Director, Retail comments: “We are going to see the popularity of homeworking rise and rise as both workers and employers seek a better work/life balance. However, those who have invested in their home office need to safeguard their working arrangements, should the worst happen. Making sure that office equipment is adequately insured as part of a home contents policy is crucial for those who rely on home computers and other technical equipment for work purposes.
Sign the petition in favour of flexible working at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/flexworkbenefits/.
All the research and case studies (including government initiatives) over the last two decades indicate that flexible working provides significant business benefits to organisations as well as a better quality of life for individuals. It could also be a more effective and popular way of reducing congestion and pollution than road pricing.
There is no ‘one size fits all’ that could be implemented by government targets or legislation, but there is plenty that government could do to educate and inform, to support and encourage, and to publicise and promote flexible working so that individuals, organisations and UK plc can reap the benefits. This is why we have just started our e-Petition.
It is not about being for or against road pricing, it is about being FOR changing the way we work so that everyone benefits and so does our environment. Individually employees are for it, unions are for it, even ministers are for it, but somehow getting widespread acceptance into organisational cultures is proving elusive, perhaps because the government, misguidedly perhaps, insists on pigeon-holing it as being about employee rights and carers rather than about the wider benefits. You can help raise the profile and shift the debate up a gear by signing the petition now at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/flexworkbenefits/) and by forwarding this to your own contacts.
If you have any questions or comments then please contact http://telework.org.uk/.
The Orange Future Enterprise coalition report identifies the principle challenges for employers and employees in dealing with flexible working practise. It emphasises that effective management of flexible working will help organisations be more competitive, successful and retain the best talent. You can download the full report from Orange.
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