THE PHENOMENON of “teleworking” has been over exaggerated, is unlikely ever to be a prospect for the majority of workers, and may be overshadowing far more effective means of improving work/life balance, according to a UK report
THE PHENOMENON of “teleworking” has been over exaggerated, is unlikely ever to be a prospect for the majority of workers, and may be overshadowing far more effective means of improving work/life balance, according to a UK report.
It noted that many studies on teleworking artificially swell the numbers of teleworkers by including “white van men”– tradesmen and other self-employed people who happen to use a computer and telephone as at least part of their work.
“Many people may have done the odd days work from home over the summer to help manage the childcare conundrum, but as the schools go back, the majority of the summer home workers are likely to trudge back into the office for the long haul to Christmas,” said John Philpott, author of the report and chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
“While government ministers and opposition politicians increasingly join forces with work/life balance campaigners and IT businesses to extol the economic, social, and environmental benefits of teleworking, it is important not to hype the potential for growth in this kind of flexible work pattern.”
Though teleworking has many merits and is likely to become more common in the future, he said it is currently far from as widespread as popularly perceived and unlikely ever to be a realistic prospect for the majority of workers.
The likelihood is that any major breakthrough on flexible working will for most people take the form of reduced hours, flexi-time or changes in shift patterns –“all good for work life balance but largely developments in fairly mundane existing approaches to managing working time rather than a step toward an entirely new world of work”, Philpott said.
The CIPD report found that only 4 per cent of UK employees are full-time teleworkers as defined by the Office for National Statistics.
Although the percentage of people teleworking rises significantly if the definition is loosened to include anybody who ever uses a computer or phone at home to do some work, say in the evening or at weekends, Philpott argued that casual teleworking of this kind conveys potential disadvantages as well as advantages.
“Whatever the difficulties employers face in managing regular teleworkers these can be compounded if workers swap the office for home on an irregular basis. And casual teleworkers without a clear routine which delineates work from home life are possibly those most prone to the perils of workaholism.”
The report noted that the rate of increase in teleworking since the late 1990s has been far faster for the self-employed. The fact that this occurred during a period when growth in self-employment was slow suggests that much of the observed increase in teleworking is simply due to more self-employed people making greater use of information and communications technology.
The preponderance of self-employed teleworkers also helps explain their other characteristics, according to the report. More than two-thirds are men, mostly in their forties and fifties, three quarters of whom are working full-time.
Almost 9 in 10 are in managerial and professional or skilled trade occupations, that is, doing the kinds of jobs often undertaken by self-employed contractors. By contrast, few teleworkers are engaged in personal service occupations, sales and customer services and manufacturing related occupations.
“The typical full-time teleworker is far more likely to be a mature male, white van driving, self-employed jobbing plumber or bricklayer than, as commonly portrayed, a techno savvy post-modern office worker,” said Philpott.
