Business pundits have been telling us for a while that home-working will increasingly become a norm for UK companies. If you’re not on the shopfloor making, processing or shifting goods, they say, you can equally well sit in your home office. You can save time and fuel by travelling less and spend more of the working day actually working, undistracted by office gossip and the whirr of the coffee machine. And it seems that the latest communication tools do make this possible. E-mail, intranet, mobile and wireless technology and video-conferencing combine to allow real-time remote communication with colleagues and clients morning, noon and night.

After spending just 48 hours in a Telewest Business home-working experiment Colin Dean, corporate systems director for Arnold Laver & Co Ltd, was convinced of the benefits and surprised at how productive you could be in a state-of-the-art home office. However, he also experienced some of the drawbacks.

Mr Dean was one of four senior executives from different sectors recruited by Telewest Business as “guinea pigs” for its trial in November. The company supplies broadband communications systems to public and private sectors and says that its “working solutions” can connect home workers and offices at speeds of up to 2MB per second. The benefits of home-working, it adds, can include reductions in office space and travel time and improvements in employees’ “work/life balance”.

Pros and cons

But Telewest insisted that its trial was designed to uncover the potential cons as well as the pros of remote working. It wanted to find out how it affected executives’ ability to manage workloads and communicate with colleagues, and also its impact on inter-personal relations.

“Remote working is a hot potato for employers,” acknowledged Howard Watson, Telewest Broadband’s chief technology officer. “Many workers see personal and productivity benefits [but] while most senior managers would agree, they want controls and proof that remote working is appropriate for them.”

Mr Dean logged his experiences over the 48 hours and by 2pm on the first day was hailing home working as “an unqualified success” in terms of productivity. “I had 10 ‘to do’ items and had already completed four. In an ordinary day at the office I’d probably get that amount done in the whole day.”

One reason he got through so much was because he wasn’t having to spend the usual two hours a day travelling to and from work. The ability to control communication also made home-working more efficient. “I’ve got 20 staff at Bradford and sometimes I’m in my office, sometimes I’m working among them – I talk to them and they talk to me,” he said. “At home, while I’ve got the phone, the mobile, e-mail and our VPN [virtual private network], I’m more in control of who I talk to and when.”

&#8220Remote working is a hot potato for employers. Many workers see personal and productivity benefits but while most senior managers would agree, they want controls and proof that remote working is appropriate for them”

Howard Watson, chief technology officer, Telewest Broadband

The downside of the experience, he said, was the “isolation factor”. Remote working, despite all the communications tools at his disposal, did feel remote. “I found sitting in a 10ft2 office for 13 hours with no human reaction a problem. I didn’t appreciate the extent to which this would be a factor and felt out of the loop.”

Human interaction

Part of the difficulty, he said, is that he is “a real people person” and on the first day of the trial his human interaction comprised a “five-second chat with the postman”. But he also firmly believes that live communication can be a vital part of work, even if not directly part of the productive process. “I don’t think you can manage staff by e-mail,” he said. “And I don’t think you should be working flat out 100% of the day. I think it should be 75% with 25% spent socially interacting. This is essential to working effectively as a team and also to make work fun, which it has to be.”

He also felt that the tangible nature of the timber business made exclusive home-working difficult. “We’ve got a product you need to see and feel,” he said. “It’s a people business too and a technical sell.”

Back at Laver’s Bradford IT centre, Mr Dean reflected that timber and other businesses should consider home-working, but as part of the business mix, not an alternative to the conventional office environment.

Mr Dean is responsible for Lavers’ information technology systems and has played a key role in the development of communications and logistics. He now believes it has one of the most advanced IT set-ups in the UK timber sector. However, face-to-face interaction and teamwork remain critical.

“Some people might be happier in the home environment than others, or might like the peace and quiet for a particular project,” he said. “But what would suit me best is a good balance of working in the office and at home.”