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12
Home Working
The widely reported suspension of
home-working by Yahoo! CEO Marissa
Mayer has reignited the debate
around flexi-working. Unpopular
as her stance is, it will have been
applauded by many dissenters –
employers and employees – who
question the claimed benefits of
home-working.
That she is the head of an IT
company gives her opposition even more
weight, as technology companies are for
obvious reasons some of the most vocal
advocates of flexi-work.
Could it be that companies that sell
advertising rather than networking and
communications equipment have a
more honest and realistic assessment
of home working’s pitfalls? Or is
Yahoo!’s experience atypical and merely
an example of what can go wrong if
a home-working strategy is poorly
managed and executed?
Who better to ask than Norma
Pearce, EMEA HR director of headset
manufacturer Plantronics. As well as
having a highly successful flexi-working
policy of its own, Plantronics recently
conducted a Onepoll survey of 2,000
UK employees to find out about their
experiences of new working practices.
The
State of the FlexibleWorking
Nation
study shows that flexible working
is still viewed with a degree of suspicion
by UK businesses and is frequently
poorly implemented, with low levels of
training and inadequate provision of tools
and technology.
UK workers are generally supportive of
flexi-working: 70% feel more productive
when working flexibly and around half
(52% and 48% respectively) welcome
a reduction in time (and money) spent
commuting and being able to spend
more time with family. Four out of five
believe the Government should do more
to encourage businesses to adopt flexi-
working.
However, the survey also highlights
a number of problems. Flexi-work can
be divisive – 42% view it as a perk for
staff with children and only 13% feel
their colleagues support their desire to
work flexibly; and its effectiveness can
be compromised by poor management
– only a third (36%) say they have the
necessary tools and knowledge to work
flexibly and 63% have not received any
specialist training.
At worst, flexi-work can be bad both
for office-based staff, who fear that
flexi-work will add to their workload,
and home workers who worry that their
opportunities for advancement will be
reduced due to an inability to participate
in office discourse, gossip and politics.
How to do it
So what lessons can we learn from
businesses like Plantronics that have
made a success of flexi-work?
In 2011, it launched the Simply
Following publication of new
research showing that 82%
of UK employees feel the
Government should be doing
more to promote flexible
working policies, James
Goulding spoke to Norma
Pearce, EMEA HR director at
Plantronics, to find out what
businesses can do to make a
success of such practices.
Flexi-work:
a question of trust – and training
Norma Pearce:
“You’ll be amazed what you get back.”