More Employees Working at Home

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 21-Sep-2005 08:45 AM
More and more employees of small businesses are doing at least some of their work from their homes, according to a survey sponsored by Sage Software.

What do you think of this trend? According to the Sage Software Business Minds survey, 69 percent of small businesses support work-at-home policies, and 80 percent of the survey respondents work between 40 and 79 hours a week.

Conducted by The Marketing Workshop, Inc. on behalf of Sage Software, the survey was conducted online in May 2005 and elicited responses from 558 small businesses with representation in regions throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Survey respondents were predominantly the business leader, with 85 percent holding
the title of president, owner, partner or CEO

Do you see this as the wave of the future? I'd be interested in knowing how much more employees based at home wind up working, without distractions like "water cooler" conversations.

Do you think it's helping small businesses keep costs down? Is it a good thing?

Aaron B.
Member

Posted 10-Dec-2005 03:08 PM
I think that future is here now. With new technologies internet "enabled", now the world is your workplace, without leaving your house. Some components of this revolution are:

-Voice over IP or Internet Telephony.
-Systems to host virtual meetings and trainings.
-Application Service Providers, that host CRM, ERP, etc..
-Web enabled applications.

I leave in Costa Rica, and even here, I see more people that work from home, especially in software industry. Some of them work on software projects in USA from a home office based on Costa Rica . That cuts the cost of moving and host a specialist near the customer facilities. Also, you don't need to use the car every day, and that saves fuel.

Maybe, software industry is more on the leading edge of this trend, but as hosted applications evolve, you will see more of this.

On the other hand, if you work from home, you may not have "water cooler" conversations, but friendly chat conversations, the temptation to take a nap after lunch, or like in my case, my children trying to get attention while talk over the phone with a customer or boss. The good part, you can work on "pajamas".

For me, it really helps small business, and will make them more competitive, and in some cases, a small workgroup distributed in different locations, with "virtual" offices, can beat a traditional "mortar and brick" company.

Aaron Barrantes
www.zonacrm.com

Helmar
Member

Posted 20-Dec-2005 04:36 AM
I have been working from home since I started my own business in October 1993. This means I cannot comment on the benefits to my employer of having me 'tele-commute', but I wouldn't be surprised if the motivations of the two parties are entirely different.

The employer first and foremost wants to save costs, whereas the employee first and foremost wants better quality of life.

Inevitably you do end up work working more, but in my case you the 'more' happens in 'far less' the amount of time than any employer would be happy with. You have far less distractions, and although a water cooler conversation is a nice thing to have, I'd rather opt for gym at 2pm or watering my garden inbetween emails, Skype/Jabber chats and the usual 'work chores'.

It does take a lot of discipline and self-analysis, though. It took me 7 years before I realised I could go to the beach on a Tuesday afternoon—no need to leave it only for after hours or weekends.

To me, the good part extends beyond what Aaron already mentioned. I don't have to get up at a specific time, don't have to dress like a monkey (shirt and tie in Africa, yeah right!), don't have to get stuck in traffic or rise even earlier to avoid it, and can do lots of things inbetween 'work', which -probably not so surprising- over time loses both its meaning and definition. Plus, the nutritional value of my lunch is unbeatable, and... well.. pyjamas I don't even wear. ;-)

I wouldn't want to swap it for anything, but as far as 'the rest out there' is concerned, I would be surprised if working from home becomes mainstream. Why? Because it does constitute a certain amount of loss in control, so it will be found more in smaller than in larger companies, and/or more at executive than and operative level. Would love to be proven wrong, though.

Technology does make it easier, that's for sure, but we need to constantly remind us that it's a tool, not an extension of ourselves. The worst thing you can do is not to have a separate office. It's far too tempting to 'just answer this email' or 'look up this site' or 'write this script' with the computer in sight (read: living room), which quickly gets out of hand—to the detriment of family life or relationship.

Been there, done that, paid the price.

Helmar

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Helmar Rudolph helps companies succeed with their CRM-related business transformation process by utilising his unique "Diamond CRM" framework.

http://www.helmar.org