Search Results for: Working from home

Employee freedom and self-regulation is the key to successful home working

Employee freedom and self-regulation is the key to successful home working 0

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Workplace

Employee freedom and self-regulation is the key to successful home working

The lazy assumption that employees who work from home are invariably shirking work is gradually dissipating, as flexible working becomes part of accepted working practice. Now new research suggests that to really get the best from their home workers, employers need to treat them as responsible adults who can actually be trusted. A new study, conducted by Nick van der Meulen of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) has revealed that job performance in working from home is driven by employee self-regulation and decision-making freedom rather than previous beliefs that it was achieved through managerial or peer control. In fact, any suggestion of shirking is erased by the evidence of a positive relationship between the extent of telework and number of hours worked. On average, full-time teleworkers perform just as well as those who do no telework at all — even under conditions of infrequent communication with the manager, low peer performance monitoring, and no outcome reward systems.

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Poor home telecoms services deter four million employees from flexible working

Poor home telecoms services deter four million employees from flexible working 0

by • Flexible working, News, Technology

The UK’s appetite for remote and flexible working is being hampered by prohibitively slow broadband speeds and poor mobile coverage, according to new research from uSwitch.com. A quarter of employees (25 percent) have experienced issues with their telecoms services over the last year, resulting in a staggering four million being prevented from working from home. In the last 12 months, 43 percent of UK employees have worked from home at least once as people are taking advantage of the increasingly flexible work environments offered by businesses – a figure which rises to 55 percent amongst 18-34 year olds. Yet six in ten (58 percent) have fallen foul of sluggish internet speeds and patchy call quality in the last year alone. The problems have been so severe for half (46 percent) of those with issues that they believe they are no longer able to work from home while these problems persist.

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American workers prefer the 9 to 5 but would take a pay cut in exchange for home working

American workers prefer the 9 to 5 but would take a pay cut in exchange for home working 0

by • Flexible working, News

9-to-5According to a new study by researchers at Princeton University and Harvard University, the average American worker is indifferent to flexible working hours and instead prefers a set 40-hour workweek. According to the study, most workers aren’t willing to take even a small pay cut to determine their own working hours. However, if given the option to work from home, many workers — especially women — would take an 8 percent wage cut to do so. The findings, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), also show that workers consistently dislike irregular work schedules set by employers on short notice. They would even give up one-fifth of their salary to avoid working evenings or weekends. Nearly half of jobseekers would not take an irregular-schedule job even if it paid a quarter more than a 9 to 5 job. This is true even of workers who currently have irregular work schedules.

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Home working myths + Millennial’s needs + Global sustainability

Home working myths + Millennial’s needs + Global sustainability 0

by • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Property, Workplace, Workplace design

Insight_twitter_logo_2In this week’s Newsletter; Mark Eltringham finds some global patterns in office design, but many local differences; suggests we stop treating Generation Y as an alien species; and shares a new report which suggests that younger people are in fact people after all. A new study finds that the perceived benefits of working from home disappear over time; Germans now work significantly longer hours than twenty years ago; and two thirds of those who have worked as an independent contractor in the US would choose not to do so again. The commercial office sector leads the global property market in sustainability; Mothers with young children are a third less likely to be in work than fathers; and we round up the latest post-Brexit news. Download our new Briefing, produced in partnership with Boss Design on the link between culture and workplace strategy and design; visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

Homeworking loses appeal as workers prefer flexible office environment

Homeworking loses appeal as workers prefer flexible office environment 0

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, Furniture, News, Workplace design

Flexible working loungeMost workers now look for flexibility in where and how they work finds a new survey from the British Council for Offices. But this doesn’t mean homeworking; as less than a third (28 percent) of workers now say they would prefer to work from home, a figure that has dropped from 45 percent in 2013, when the research from the BCO and Savills was last conducted. Over three-quarters of respondents (77 percent) said that they currently work in a traditional office, with the majority (60 percent) choosing to work from a dedicated workstation compared to only four percent that are asked to share desks with colleagues. This desire for a dedicated desk has increased over the past three years, rising from a figure of 41 percent in 2013; but despite demand for a dedicated desk, most workplaces (70 percent) now also include a communal environment to work from, providing a space for more dynamic working.

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Quarter of UK workers would choose home working over pay rise

Quarter of UK workers would choose home working over pay rise 0

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Workplace

Scottish businesses home workingWe reported earlier this week that flexible working has gone mainstream, with over a third of organisations now offering some kind of flexible working arrangement. The question is whether these flexible workers are more productive, as some employers persist in perceiving a flexible working request as a means of ‘shirking from home.’ Now new research to mark National work from home day, shows that 48 percent of workers are happier when they can work from home and nearly a third (32 percent) of British workers ‘feel more productive’ when they do so. The study by the Institute of Inertia, a partnership between comparethemarket.com and the University of Sheffield, found that nearly a quarter (24 percent or 7.5 million) of British workers would rather work from home one day a week than receive a pay rise, while seven million admit they suffer from ‘procrastination or inertia issues’ when working in an office.

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Third of professionals worry about weight gain from home working

Third of professionals worry about weight gain from home working 0

by • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

Weight-worriesRemote working is on the rise; 45 percent of UK workers are now based outside of their main office for more than half the week. But working from home could contribute to an expanding waistline, as a third (32 percent) of the UK’s business professionals admit that they fear getting fat due to the temptation to snack more when working from home compared to working in an office environment. The research by Regus canvassed the opinions of more than 4,000 business people across the UK. The findings suggest that the solitude associated with working at home, coupled with ready accessibility to fridge, cupboard and larder, leads to more munching during the 9-5. Said Richard Morris, UK CEO, Regus: “Working from home makes it easy to reach for a doughnut whilst still in your pyjamas. This look is not so popular in a workspace surrounded by professional peers.”

Many employers discourage home working, unless it is out of hours

Many employers discourage home working, unless it is out of hours

by • Comment, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Home workingA combination of tube and rail strikes causing travel disruption in London today, means many businesses will accede to requests to work from home. Yet a large number of UK employers are still reluctant to encourage home working. According to a recent report by Redcentric, despite the fact that that just under a third of UK office workers reported an increase in productivity when working outside of the workplace, 48 percent of respondents claimed that their employers didn’t allow them to work remotely, with 23 percent saying that their business simply didn’t like them doing it, for reasons such as data privacy and loss of productivity. Yet research by PMI Health Group shows nearly a third of staff feel pressured to routinely check and send emails from home, which suggests that employers tacitly encourage home-working, as long as it is on their terms.

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Office location key factor for staff engagement, with home working preferred 0

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, News

Office location most important productivity factor, with home working preferred

It might be disheartening to learn that despite an employers best efforts to design an engaging and inspiring workplace, for many employees it’s where the offices are located that matters most. In a recent UK poll by ClickSoftware over half (57%), said office location was the most important reason why they’d stay in their job ahead of both pay (52%) and job security (33%). However, the most preferred place to work is at home, with 60 percent of people identifying this location to be ‘very comfortable’. The survey also looked at the factors that affected job performance, and found one in five people (20%) believe their productivity at work has been negatively affected by the location of their job. This increases further in the capital with over a quarter of Londoners (26%) feeling that their productivity would suffer by working in a ‘horrible location’. (more…)

Homeworking has environmental benefits, says Carbon Trust

by • Environment, Facilities management, Flexible working, News

Environmental and cost benefits of homeworking

There have been some doubts cast recently on the environmental benefits of flexible working. At the recent ThinkFM conference, Lord Rupert Redesdale, the CEO Energy Managers Association said that keeping buildings open for longer to accommodate flexible workers could become unfeasible for many businesses. But what if you simply increase the numbers of home workers instead? Homeworking reduces employee commuting, resulting in carbon, money and time savings. If office space is properly rationalised to reflect this, homeworking can also significantly reduce office energy consumption and rental costs. This is according to new research from the Carbon Trust, which found that if adopted and encouraged by employers across the country, homeworking could result in annual savings of over 3 million tonnes of carbon and cut costs by £3 billion.

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Are you working or shirking from home?

by • Comment, Legal news, Technology, Workplace

Staff ill health

During recent weather-related travel disruption, I was inundated with various pieces of information on software that spies on home based employees to check that they really are working, not shirking from home. As Acas opens a consultation on a draft Code of Practice regarding the extended right to request flexible working; and figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show the number of people working from home in the UK has risen to over 10 per cent – the advent of these systems begs the question: do employers really trust their staff enough to let them work remotely?

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Turns out that hybrid working is indeed the new normal. For a minority of people

Turns out that hybrid working is indeed the new normal. For a minority of people

by • Flexible working, News

A new analysis from the Office for National Statistics confirms that hybrid working is now the dominant form of flexible work for many people in Great Britain.A new analysis from the Office for National Statistics confirms that hybrid working is now the dominant form of flexible work for many people in Great Britain. The figures, which cover the period from January to March 2025, show that 28 percent of working adults now combine home and on-site work on a regular basis – the highest proportion recorded since the ONS began monitoring hybrid working patterns. This compares with just 9 percent who work exclusively from home and around 55 percent who are permanently based at a single workplace. The remaining proportion are made up of those with no fixed place of work or whose work locations vary, such as mobile or site-based roles.
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