Guest blog: Why Working from Home isn't for everyone, but Relationships are - By Steve Byrne, CEO, Travel Counsellors.

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Guest blog: Why Working from Home isn't for everyone, but Relationships are - By Steve Byrne, CEO, Travel Counsellors.

The number of UK homeworkers has increased by 45% over the past 15 years, and those that are self-employed by 30%. This covers over 3m people in the UK and accounts for 15% of the adult working population.  

Surveys consistently find that homeworkers are able to work more flexibly, and have higher levels engagement and productivity. The flexibility that this type of working provides is supported by the fact that 80% report a better work life balance; they are more engaged with 82% of employees stating they would be more loyal to their employer if they had flexible working arrangements; and they are more productive with 91% saying they get more work done when working remotely. In a recent survey of our 1,800 home-based travel counsellors, 94% said they agreed with the statement “I love my job”.  And 92% would not return to their previous job, which is a powerful statement given that the vast majority have left a salary to work on a self-employed basis.

This growing trend isn’t just isolated to the UK, with American Society of Travel Agents stating that “the fastest growing segment of the US travel industry is homeworking agents who are professional and making use of the latest technology”.

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Work Wise Week 2018 Launch Blog: Pay, Productivity & Performance - By David Lennan, Chairman, Work Wise UK

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Work Wise Week 2018 Launch Blog: Pay, Productivity & Performance - By David Lennan, Chairman, Work Wise UK

 

Work Wise Week is a very significant period in the Work Wise UK calendar when we highlight and discuss the key issues affecting workplace performance. During 2017 Work Wise UK focused attention on the Productivity conundrum and the missing £Billions and whilst during  last year more was written about  Productivity than at any time in our Industrial history, attention has now swiftly turned to Equal Pay and the gender pay gap.

Work Wise UK believe that our low productivity is a symptom of poor work place management, combined with a mix of other related factors such as the age and composition of our workforce, working hours, poor vocational education, housing, travel to work congestion, workplace health, investment in skills and technology, supply chain management and innumerable other issues that can influence and change the workplace environment and impact on organisational performance.

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Guest blog: In the car on the M4 - my transitory dwelling place, my space in-between - By Dr Harriet Shortt, Associate Professor in Organisational Studies, University of the West of England Bristol

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Guest blog: In the car on the M4 - my transitory dwelling place, my space in-between - By Dr Harriet Shortt, Associate Professor in Organisational Studies, University of the West of England Bristol

As Work Wise Uk's Commute Smart Week comes to a close, I thought I might write a piece that, I hope, will raise some thoughts and reflections about how and why our commutes might offer a space for escape and freedom. Taking a critical, analytical view here, I offer some thoughts on the commute as a space ‘in-between’ in which we can momentarily break away from the multitude of identities we seek to maintain in contemporary society, and temporarily find a sense of sanctuary in a working world characterized by change and fluidity.

The commute. On a train, on a bus, or in a car. It is a space in-between the dominant spaces of work and home. It is a liminal space. Or is it?

In my paper, ‘Liminality, space and the importance of ‘transitory dwelling places’’ (Shortt, 2015), I argue that spaces in-between – or liminal spaces – become transitory dwelling places when they are made meaningful by workers. I was talking about spaces at work in this paper –  like corridors, stairwells, and toilets. Places in which, as my research shows, workers hang out in order to seek privacy, escape the visibility of work, or hide away with colleagues for snatched conversations away from the open-plan office. But recently, my commute in my car from Bath to Bristol and back seems to be taking on similar characteristics. It’s my little space in-between. My space to escape.

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Guest blog: Commuting is taking longer and making our lives harder - time for a twenty-first century approach - By Frances O'Grady, TUC General Secretary

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Guest blog: Commuting is taking longer and making our lives harder - time for a twenty-first century approach - By Frances O'Grady, TUC General Secretary

British workers now spend the equivalent of 27 working days a year travelling to and from work, according to TUC figures published today. In the last ten years, the average commute has increased by 20 hours a year.

And commuting is eating up more of our money as well as our time. Rail fare increases of 3.6 per cent have already been announced for the start of 2018, and the price of petrol is predicted to rise as well.

With the days getting shorter, this is the time of year when the commuter blues really bite. Travelling home from work in the dark can be depressing – even dangerous – as weather worsens and travelling conditions become dismal.

It doesn’t have to be this way. And Commute Smart Week is a good time to start thinking about smarter alternatives, like flexi-time and high-quality home-working.

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Guest blog: We can't stop the clocks going back, but we can take positive action to improve our well being - By Ian McKay, Chairman, How's My Driving.

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Guest blog: We can't stop the clocks going back, but we can take positive action to improve our well being - By Ian McKay, Chairman, How's My Driving.

In an ideal world a large proportion of people would prefer to work from home, or at least much closer to home than they currently do. The stresses of long traffic queues, delayed trains and cancelled flights all affect our physical and mental health and extend our working day.

Even without these pressures it’s a fact that “driving 25,000 miles or more a year on business is the third most dangerous activity in the UK”.

It’s not realistic for everybody to work from home, but society must start to think and act on the sheer waste of resource in people travelling hours to just sit at a desk in a corporate office.

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