Member Article

Homeworking

With Business LinkAllowing staff to work from home on either a full or part-time basis can bring a range of business benefits from increased productivity and greater staff motivation to more effective use of your premises. The spread of homeworking is opening up a new range of possibilities for the way businesses can work and structure themselves. Carol Groombridge from Business Link looks at where to start when assessing your environmental responsibilities.Â

Q. What are the business benefits of employees working from home?

A. With increasing numbers of employees working at home, it’s clear there are a number of benefits for business. Potential advantages include improved retention of employees as homeworking can help retain working parents with childcare responsibilities, improved productivity through staff having fewer interruptions and less commuting time, increased staff motivation and savings on office space.Before embarking on this approach potential drawbacks obviously need to be considered. For example, how would you manage homeworkers and monitor their performance? Can you ensure employees’ skills and work quality doesn’t suffer; will there be a risk of communication problems and a sense of isolation among homeworkers.

Q. Will I need to provide my employees with office equipment?

A. You’re likely to be responsible for providing, installing and maintaining all equipment unless the employee uses their own kit. Depending on the employee’s role you may need to provide a workstation, with suitable desk and chair, storage, PC with office software, email and broadband internet connection, a dedicated business phone line, printer and fax.

Q. How can technology facilitate working from home?

A. Advances in technology can allow you to create virtual teams where employees work together despite working from home. Always-on broadband internet connections have made emailing colleagues and business contacts and sharing documents quick and easy. With virtual teamworking employees do not need to be in the same place, at the same time, in order to work together. Employees in different places can communicate with each other in ‘real time’ through telephone conference calling, video conferencing or using instant messaging. Accessing your business network and databases by connecting to an intranet or extranet can enable employees to work from home at any time of the day.

Q. How can I ensure data security?

A. There are important security issues to bear in mind when employing staff who work from home for example, data security could be compromised if homeworkers use their work computer for personal purposes. It’s best to provide staff with a computer and make it clear that it’s for business use only. To find out about Business Link services in your local area, call 0845 600 9 006.Business Link services in the North East are supported by the European Regional Development Fund, through the Government Office for the North East, and One NorthEast.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .