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Remote Working – an Economic Bottom Line |
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Written by Paul McClure
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Tuesday, 12 August 2008 19:20 |
 With soaring oil prices and a continual stream of green taxes coming online, workers in the UK are facing huge increases in the cost of travelling to their place of work. The constant message for people to give up their cars in favour of public transport, where available, and not to use their cars at peak travel times misses the fundamental point. People don't actually want to drive to work in rush hour. And even those fortunate souls with access to public transport are facing double digit rises in fares.
However making that 9am start at work is not the workers decision; the companies that they work for make the terms of employment and it is them who dictate when their employees will start work. So it's no surprise that when a standard working day starts around 9am and finishes around 5pm that we experience peak road use around those times. Clearly, congested roads are no use to anyone – journeys take longer, are more stressful and more pollution per journey is emitted by each vehicle while it is inching along the carriageway. Surely there is a better solution?
Well, of course there is and it has been with us for at least the last decade, with many improvements being made in the last five years or so. It is perfectly possible to work in a variety of roles remotely from your own location, with no breaks in communications. The technologies currently available in conjunction with a broadband internet connection allow workers to have full access to the applications, files and email which they need to do their job. Voice Over IP telephony allows them to be contactable by phone, seamlessly integrating internal phone systems to remote workers.
So why the relative lack of take-up? A major reason is a lack of incentive for employers to implement the solutions needed. At a base level, a company doesn't particularly care if its employees have the commute from hell as long as they turn up on time and can do the job when they get there. The increased cost of a commute and the time taken is of no concern to them as it doesn't affect the company bottom line. But what if it did?
The UK Government has made aggressive commitments in terms of CO2 emission reductions that it is realistically unlikely to be able to hit. The technologies cited in terms of hybrid and hydrogen vehicles are too immature to produce the sea-change in emissions that they are looking for. At cfhw.org we believe that Government are not giving enough emphasis to alternatives to making certain journeys at all. That is why we believe that the Government should look into ways of incentivising an increased take up of remote working by major employers. And as a hint, companies generally like paying less tax. Tie an increased take up of remote working to a tax break and the employers will follow.
Clearly, not all jobs would be suitable for remote working, but for anyone essentially working at a desk in an office spending all their time on email and telephone to other people there is no real requirement to have them physically located in a building in the centre of a busy city. And the upside for the employers is that workers who are less stressed and have more control over their working day are more productive.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 12 August 2008 20:20 )
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Economics of Home Working