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    No place like home

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    AA11-Aug-Sep-2005-homeofficelargeWorking from home is the latest boom trend, made possible by rapid advancements in communications technology and the realisation by many employers (and the self employed) that home workers can seriously boost bottom lines. For many professionals, that means exchanging office politics and peak hour traffic for a pair of bunny slippers and a Hugh Heffner robe. So what do you need to transform your spare bedroom into the ultimate home HQ? As Jodie O’Keeffe reveals, it’s all about technology and attitude.

    Ever seen one of those ads, sticky taped to a power pole or at the back of the local paper, enticing you to “Earn BIG $$$$$, work from home, be your own boss”? For a fleeting moment, you see yourself rolling out of bed, making a coffee and sauntering into your immaculate, state-of-the-art home office. Of course, the rest of the fantasy is unclear. It is never revealed what you do, exactly, to earn BIG $$$$$.

    However, the changing landscapes of communications technology, workplace culture and employee expectations mean that the modern home office is fast becoming a reality. We have wireless broadband, tablet PCs, webcam, webphone, wireless hotspot networks — we have the technology to do almost any job, anywhere.

    Generation Y wants to go surfing before work, Gen X wants more time with the family and the baby boomers are ready to relinquish rush hour for something altogether more civilised. Flexible work practices, and home offices, are on the rise.

    THE FAMILY-FRIEND START-UP

    Ben Hosken likes his office. It’s an Apple Powerbook and it goes with him everywhere: the lounge room, the kitchen, the home office, the office office.

    Hosken, a self-described alpha geek, is co-founder of AgentArts, a technology company that builds personalisation and recommendation software. Based on your existing collection of, say, CDs or DVDs, his software will help you choose what to buy next.

    Once employing 12 people, the size of AgentArts has waxed and waned with the fortunes of the dot com era. Working from home became a financial necessity.

    “We had a big office in the city when we started in 1999, then we had to reduce staff. We got rid of the office and started working from home in 2002,” says Hosken.

    “It took me about six months to get used to working from home. At that point, I was overworking rather than underworking.”

    Now, Hosken and his cofounder maintain a Melbourne office, while two part-timers are based in San Francisco. With two young children, Hosken blurs the boundaries between work, play and family by dividing his time between home and the office. For him, it’s all good.

    “I’ve found my productivity level has greatly increased working from home. It’s a better environment, there are fewer distractions,” he says.

    FEWER DISTRACTIONS EQUALS SHARPER FOCUS

    “If we have a face-to-face meeting, it might take an hour. If we have a teleconference, we’ve prepped and we’re not wasting time with small talk, so we get the same work done in half the time.”

    Of course, the home office lacks colleagues and, therefore, the professional interaction (and gossip) found in a large office. But Hosken interacts with peers virtually.

    “I keep track of about 150 weblogs and, weird as it sounds, I’ve made some fantastic friends through blogs. I read a lot out of the US and Europe and it gives me that peer level chit chat from a technology and social perspective.”

    Hosken relies on instant messenger, email and voiceover internet protocol (VoIP) to communicate with the outside world and uses an RSS reader to monitor his favourite blogs for new postings. His VoIP service provides him with a US phone number, which can reach him anywhere.

    “I’m fully portable wherever I go, I’ve got my whole office with me. With the phone number I’ve got, people don’t know that I’m at home, I’m at the coffee shop, I’m at the library, I’m on the train, I can be on the couch watching something but I’m still working.”

    As any self-respecting alpha geek knows, you never clock off.

    “I couldn’t just go to the office and work eight hours a day, doing some code, attending meetings… it’s not enough. In the space that I play, I need to be doing more: more reading, more keeping up to date with trends and technology. If I was in the office all the time, I’d still need to do this extra stuff.”

    For fellow AgentArts co-founder, Andrew Coates, therein lies the problem. He now works out of the company’s Melbourne office , having been frustrated by his previous experience working from home.

    “In my role as business development manager, I thrive on human contact. Working from home, I felt like the world was passing me by. Plus, there was no delineation between work and home, so I felt like I was at work all the time,” he says.

    Now, Coates goes to the office five days a week for some old-fashioned face-to-face interaction.

    PUSHING PRODUCTIVITY, CUTTING COSTS

    In the current climate of low unemployment, flexible work practices enable employers to attract and retain workers.

    Teleworking (working away from the office) has also been shown to increase productivity and decrease costs, while keeping workers happy. A survey by the International Telework Association in 2003 found that employers in the US save over US$5,000 per year per teleworker in real estate costs and increased productivity. With that kind of incentive, the boom in teleworking was inevitable. The survey found that 24 percent of the working population are teleworkers. In the Netherlands, the figure stands at 26 percent. However, here in Australia, just 17 percent of the workforce spent any time at all working from home in 2003.

    So, what’s the hold up? The Australian Government has set up an advisory committee to investigate and promote teleworking. Meanwhile, a private sector think-tank, the Toshiba Flexible Working Special Interest Group, is also championing the adoption of flexible work practices.

    Group chairman, Dr James Cowley, believes workplace culture is the culprit.

    “It’s the mentality of management,” he says. “The technology we have now is amazing, but a lot of companies are still stuck somewhere in history.”

    While anything from manufacturing facilities to power plants are now operated remotely, Cowley believes business managers consider their office-based staff as being back in the Industrial age.

    “They are set in the mentality that workers have to clock on and need to be seen and heard, instead of being assessed on performance and output,” he says.

    According to Cowley, the manager of the future understands that workers want flexibility and that this is essential to attract employees during times of skills shortage. By offering flexible working conditions, organisations can tap into valuable resources of older workers and parents at home with children.

    A culture of trust is required for teleworking to be successful. The special interest group was set up following a survey of employees’ attitudes towards flexible working. The resulting report, ominously titled Mobility and Mistrust, found that “mistrust of flexible workers is prevalent among Australian and New Zealand organisations”.

    Cowley recommends that managers try teleworking for themselves, to lead by example and engender trust among their staff.

    MEASURE YOUR OWN SUCCESS

    One manager following Cowley’s advice is veteran teleworker, Martin Aungle. As corporate communications manager for Dimension Data, Aungle works three days a week at home in the NSW Southern Highlands and two in the company’s Sydney office. He has done so for the past seven years.

    “Working from home allows me to be more productive and that’s how I measure my performance — in terms of productivity, rather than the number of hours I work,” he says.

    Not that Aungle sits around in his smoking jacket all day, dashing off the odd email. He still puts in the hours, but tailors them to suit. He’ll take time out to pick the kids up from school, but deals with global commitments — say, in the UK or South Africa — later in the evening as their work day begins.

    Aungle manages two staff, both Melbourne-based teleworkers, and applies the same philosophy to their work.

    “The type of work they do involves writing press releases and working to deadlines,” he says. “They are managed and measured on productivity. It’s all performance based, so it works well.”

    However, Aungle agrees that trust is essential to any homebased work arrangement. He worked with Dimension Data in Sydney for 18 months before moving to the Southern Highlands, where a two-hour commute and a growing family made teleworking necessary. As a trusted employee, the company accommodated what was an unusual request at the time.

    To Aungle, the resulting work/life balance is priceless.

    “I’ll keep doing it for the foreseeable future,” he says. “The company looks after me, so I feel a loyalty towards them. I’m in a situation that would be very difficult to replicate. I have a picture on the wall from my son and it says ‘I love my Daddy because he goes to work at our place’.”