"The Scotsman" 8th November, 1999
Don't be a commuter - stay at home with a computer
Teleworking has such a lot of advantages - so why aren't more of us doing it? asks Elisabeth MahoneyBut despite the daily commuter jams on the roads and sardine-like arrangements on trains, there are now real signs of change in out work patterns. Thanks to new technologies which make remote working and home based businesses possible for a whole new range of jobs, individuals and large companies alike are waking up to a brave new world of work. And for the individuals involved that can mean waking up long after the average commuter but still beating them to the desk; working in their dressing gown or jeans and taking their coffee breaks - as long as they like - in the garden.
In addition to more established self-employed and freelance ways of working, the Nineties have seen the real beginnings of teleworking; employees working at home using technology installed by their employers. BT already has 3500 such workers and hopes to double that number in the next year, while the Automobile Association has a home-based team taking calls from stranded motorists. The arrangement has worked so well that the organisation closed one of its call centres this summer in favour of an entirely virtual set up in Leeds.
Though the numbers of employees working in this way is not as great as was once forecast - it is estimated that only 10,000 full time workers have swapped the office for their own home - some 5 percent of the working population are now teleworking and the figure is rising fast.
Nicola Harrison's job title is evidence of technological change and progress. An internet librarian for Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (lets put it this way, she doesn't stamp books), she has been cataloguing and monitoring engineering websites from a corner of her kitchen for two years. For Harrison the benefits of home working easily outweigh the problems, especially while her children are young. "I don't miss having to dress up for work," she says, "I save a lot of time on ironing! What I miss about office life are the informal social things - chewing the fat for half an hour over coffee, going down the pub after work, that sort of thing."
But with her youngest child only three, how does she ever manage to get any work done in the kitchen? "The only possible separate space in the house has no natural light and my eyes were getting strained working in that cubby hole. I moved into the kitchen to have good light, but I need to be on call anyway when the children are in the house in case the youngest one has an accident or a major crisis with getting a doll's dress on."
It is the flexibility of teleworking that most appeals to Harrison right now. She has been able to increase the hours she works since her youngest joined a playgroup and will do so again when she reaches school age. But at the moment she can do the school run, be on hand for emergencies and work on, if need be, in the evening once her husband gets home.
Unlike self employed people working alone, Harrison does have colleagues - through a modem link, if not across the desk from her. "I probably email the office four or five times a day and I go into the office one morning a week. But the most important thing is to have the right kind of personality for this kind of work. Some people can't work unless there is somebody driving them. If you're the kind of person who will watch daytime tv unless told otherwise, it's probably not for you."
For a freelance arts journalist such as myself, watching daytime tv can be justified as research, though it isn't one of the perks of homeworking mentioned by Moira Jeffrey. Until the beginning of this year a civil court lawyer, Jeffrey has not only changed direction big-time in her career but equally her conditions of work couldn't be more different
"Previously I had administrative staff, I ran an office with at least one secretary and a receptionist. Now I have a work-space in the recess of our lounge. Like Harrison she points to the informal social side of office life as the one aspect she really misses. "I really miss the meaningless interaction that you have at work. When you are working exclusively by phone and email you have to find other ways of establishing contact and building relationships."
All of this is well worth it for Jeffrey; a small price to pay for moving from the demands of a high-pressure, long-hours job to a less stressful working life. "My life is much, much easier now and I'm in control of my work to a much greater degree," she says, but adds some sound advice for anyone considering an escape from office life. "If at all possible get a separate space to work in at home because it can be hard all round if you are using a shared space. You need to be very clear about your means, the level of income you're aiming for, and you really need some funds to tide you over early on. It's just like starting a business - you need to be able to put financial issues aside long enough to get yourself established."
And finally she emphasises self-reliance as a key personal quality all homeworkers will need: "I've learned to be my own counsellor because now if times are bad, I can only look to myself - it's nobody else's fault."
It needn't be all lonesome on the homeworking front though. With increasing numbers of people working in this way and the trend bound to increase as technology in the home becomes more familiar, there is help on-hand, on-line.
Caroline Tresman editor of www.homeworking,com found a dearth of good advice on the Internet when she first began working from home. "The idea is to provide quality advice for free to the ordinary person thinking about homeworking. It's important to remember that many people turn to this way working not because it's the best way for them to work but because they have money problems. Instead of dealing with their debt they get involved in homeworking scams which end up taking money off them. We encourage them to deal with their finances first and we have a debt consultant providing advice."
With sound practical advice, some space to work in and the right technological support, working from home is proving perfect for some, though it's not right for everyone. Some homeworkers find isolation a real problem, others find that work takes over their home life to an unacceptable level. "Never, ever work in your bedroom, that's the golden rule" said one homeworker who, strangely, didn't want to be named. "When work's not going well, you won't be able to sleep in there and you certainly won't be able to do anything else, with unmet deadlines and post-it pads galore right next to the bed."
So romance can be tricky for the homeworker just as much as it can be in the office. Despite all the technological progress it seems that some things will never change.