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It is hard to separate the phrase "working from home" from images of sleeping late, slobbing around in your pyjamas, and watching daytime television. Office-bound colleagues make snide comments about your "day off" and complain bitterly about officially sanctioned absenteeism.

Yet there are advantages in home working and its broader incarnation "flexible working". These include improvements in productivity, recruitment and retention, and a reduction in office costs and environmental damage because of fewer commuters.

Flexible work policies can also help parents or those with caring responsibilities fit their work in with their home life. A survey last year found that 77 per cent of parents with children under six said flexible hours were a decisive factor in their job selection.¹ They may also encourage some staff to return to work after a career break. If just 10 per cent of non-working mothers returned to work after maternity leave, employers in the UK would save nearly £40m in recruitment costs alone.²

Flexible working ranges from hotdesking - where staff don't have their own desk but sit at whichever workstation is free - to something as straightforward as not having to come into the office before your first appointment of the day.

Informally, flexible working has been part of working life, particularly for more senior staff, for some time. In April 2001, 2.2 million people were working from home with a phone and computer at least one day at week. But three-quarters of homeworkers are in the private sector; the public sector has been slower on the uptake, although some notable experiments are under way (see below).

One of the driving factors behind the growth in flexible working is new technology. High-speed internet connections such as broadband can give remote access to central IT systems, mobile phones mean people are permanently contactable, and home computers can fax, scan and print as well as use e-mail and the internet. A new generation of handheld, palmtop computers is also allowing people to access e-mail and databases wherever they are.

It's not all plain sailing, though.Working from home raises issues about who pays for work essentials. Computers, consumables such as printer cartridges, and phone calls cost money, as do lighting, heating and the space itself. For some, home working reduces travel costs and enhances quality of life, and so they are happy to pay for incidentals, but employers with proactive home and work policies are increasingly contributing to home working expenses.

Flexible working also changes the way people are managed. If a manager can't see a member of staff at their desk, the focus shifts to the outputs and outcomes they generate. Tim Dwelly and Yvonne Bennion in Time to go Home, say: "Home working is about the work produced, not 'what they are up to'. If they go shopping or take a nap, this should not matter if the work is good."³ This change of focus demands trust, and is likely to prove challenging for managers and colleagues who like to be seen putting in long hours at their desk but who may not be particularly productive.

No matter how widespread flexible working becomes, it is unlikely to render the office redundant. Many people don't wish to work from home, others have jobs that are site-specific, and even those who do work flexibly need to meet colleagues now and then. As home working expert Ursula Huws puts it: "There's no electronic substitute for the occasional exchange of pheromones."

¹ Department of Trade and Industry and Reedonline survey from www.reed.co.uk, January 2003

2 Department of Transport and Industry, Work and Parents, Competitiveness and Choice green paper, 2000

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³ T Dwelly, Y Bennion, Time to Go Home, The Work Foundation, 2003

Hotdesking

One radical approach to flexible working has been taken by Nottinghamshire Council. When it needed to accommodate more social work and occupational therapy staff, it decided to invest in new IT and office equipment rather than expand its traditional office space.  

Meadow House's new annexe accommodates 144 employees where a traditional office would house only 88. The council has done this by introducing hotdesking, where staff can work from home or out in the field or in the office. When they do need to come into the office, they collect their personal storage unit and roll it over to a free workstation where they log on using a desktop PC or their own laptop.  

There are break-out spaces, quiet areas for concentrated work, and various meeting rooms. Everyone, including managers, is part of the open plan regime, although static staff such as administrators do get their own workspace. 

The set up costs have been considerable. John Shilton, resources programme manager for the council, says the new arrangements cost about £300,000 more than a traditional office. Particularly expensive were the flat screens (needed to keep desks uncluttered) and the laptops. But it is a relatively small chunk of the budget of £1.8m and has brought savings.  

The new arrangement has won a cautious stamp of approval from staff. Shilton believes approval ratings will rise as the changes bed in. But he stresses the importance of doing it properly from the beginning. "We did a lot of initial research and have approached the whole thing holistically. You can't cherry-pick the bits you like. Do it properly or it will fail."

Flexiwork

In response to growing recruitment and retention problems in Dundee, director of social work Alan Baird opted to pilot a flexible work scheme. Nine volunteer teams were given freedom over how to introduce flexible working. The only proviso was that the service to clients had to be at least as good as before. 

Independent evaluation at the end of 2003 (when the pilots were six months old) found that the pilot teams had improved in a number of ways compared with previous performance. 

• Reports were completed on time, with fewer errors, to a higher standard and more cases were closed. For example, in one criminal justice team late delivery of social inquiry reports to the courts went down from 32 per cent in 2002 to 6 per cent during the pilot period. 
• Staff reported lower stress levels and said they were getting more and better work done. Absences fell and minor staffing crises were easier to manage. For example, staff could work from home to cope with emergency child care demands. 
• Staff had choice and control, and reported not feeling guilty about not being in the office on time. There was increased ownership and self-management in teams.   However, the pilot study found: 
• Difficulties in remote access to data and poor IT skills.  
• More planning in infrastructure and support systems was needed to avoid relying on goodwill and patience of staff. 
• Difficulties for managers in assessing performance - particularly the change from measuring input to measuring outputs and outcomes