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Teleworking in the UK?
neiljt writes "As a UK-based IT worker living about a 90-minute journey from London, I am interested in the idea of working from home, or teleworking. In the UK, however, the take-up of this practice has been less than frantic. My own immediate plan is to find work at home here in the UK, however my ultimate aim would be to find employment, which gives me the freedom to live where I choose. What barriers exist to working in the UK for a non-UK (e.g. US) employer. What about a UK citizen living outside the UK working for a UK or US employer? (Feel free to substitute your country of residence)"
It would be interesting to hear both from employers who support (or would support) this model, and from employees who have successfully negotiated employment at home.
In general, have your experiences been positive? If you have had problems, how have they been resolved? And now that the technology has been available for at least 10 years, will teleworking ever take off in the UK?"
"The arguments will probably be familiar to most here, but I will state them anyway, just to be sure you know how I'm thinking.
Advantages for me:
- Save journey time of 3 hours per day
- Save travel expenses
- Save travel frustration (delays, crowds, mobile phone idiocy, etc.)
- Be fresh and alert when I start work
- Feel better at the end of the working day
- Be at work promptly each day
- Work in a pleasant/relaxed environment
- Ready access to my (large) technical library
- Cost savings
- Office space savings
- Improved productivity
- Increased motivation
- Reduced traffic congestion
- Reduction in total travel and therefore pollution
- Employer needs to monitor quantity and quality of work performed
- Internet connectivity (mine currently limited to 56Kb)
It would be interesting to hear both from employers who support (or would support) this model, and from employees who have successfully negotiated employment at home.
In general, have your experiences been positive? If you have had problems, how have they been resolved? And now that the technology has been available for at least 10 years, will teleworking ever take off in the UK?"
A couple of years ago I worked for a fabless semiconductor company coming in to their offices (50 miles away) one day a week and working the rest of the time from home. I was already set up with a cablemodem and PCs, there was no problem doing the actual work and keeping in touch by telephone. So "the problems" have "been solved", in IT-type work.
All of your advantages seem realistic, a disadvantage you'll probably have to add is to have to carefully manage your motivation. I found that a phone call and a chat would cheer me up and get me going if the news was positive, more often in that company the news was negative or depressing and it requires some mindgames then to keep yourself pouring energy into the work and not slumping in the chair thinking "what's the use?". Being on the phone regularly and documenting where you are at in a place easily visible from the office (CVS, email project dumps, etc) can deal with the monitoring problems in a good way.
However, this company had the most amazing political situations going on. I found that by not physically being there all the time there it was easy to miss out on the latest twists and turns in the ongoing sagas, and that in such a hothouse political situation that can be a big drawback. I also found that there was a tendancy by others to regard myself as less committed, simply by lack of physical presence, even though in every other way it was clear I was playing more than a full role. So there are psychological issues in not being physically present when problems and bad or good news comes up, you are not seen to be proactive when someone else is always first on the scene to fight the fire, since the call is going to come to the office.
The advantages are clear, especially if you have children. But the disadvantages make themselves felt pretty clearly too, if you cherish hopes of getting a more managerial responsibility over time, you might find this system is not helping you towards that. In the end I quit after 14 months, when the political sagas reached a point where it was clear there was no growth path for myself (and in fact anyone else based in their UK office as far as I could see, three other people also left out of a total staff of 8 while I was there).
sounds silly, but it isn't. you're on your own for a lot of the time. you have to do things to keep yourself from going crazy. maybe i've been really lucky, but except for a few rotten apples i've always had great co-workers. and not being able to work with them kind of sucks actually.
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Of course, I'm a developer. Not sure what it's like for non-pure IT staff.
Cheers,
Ian
Advantages for me:
Save journey time of 3 hours per day - (I can sleep in an extra 3 hours)
Save travel expenses - (Forget the car, I can use my Snoopy slippers)
Save travel frustration (delays, crowds, mobile phone idiocy, etc.) - (I only have to trip over my dog)
Be fresh and alert when I start work - (Morning crack and coffee)
Feel better at the end of the working day - (I'm drunk by 0930)
Be at work promptly each day - (Work starts when I wake up... bitch)
Work in a pleasant/relaxed environment - (Did I mention my crack and coffee?)
Ready access to my (large) technical library - (Google)
Advantages for my employer:
Cost savings - (I can browse for porn at home)
Office space savings - (No need for a cubicle, I don't have to leave bed)
Improved productivity - (crack!)
Increased motivation - (I can say 'fuck you' to my employer and not be heard)
Advantages for society:
Reduced traffic congestion - (I'm a maniac driver, if I don't have to leave home no one will die due to my poor driving skills)
Reduction in total travel and therefore pollution - (When I soil my britches no one will notice)
There are a number of disadvantages and factors to consider, though none should be insurmountable. A couple might be:
Employer needs to monitor quantity and quality of work performed - (That's what webcams are for, watch while I surf porn sites, smoke crack, drink my coffee, and soil myself)
Internet connectivity (mine currently limited to 56Kb) - (My employer should cough up some dough so I can get a broadband connection so I can be more productive in my porn browsing)
.. and you want that to be somewhere nice... The best option is to start your own business.
I work from home full-time, and make a good rate doing it. (Occasionally I have business travel, to client sites, say about 10 days/year.) I work for an software consultancy.
The way I got here was to work for this group full-time on-site on a number of different engagements over a few years. When the first opportunity to work at home came up, I took it. I provide my own hardware and net connectivity.
Since I have proven my ability to get results and to do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer, I got this chance. Since I still make my dates and satisfy the customer, I am still afforded this opportunity.
It has its downsides, no doubt. My 2-year old daughter doesn't always understand when I can't interrupt myself and come do what she wants. But the time I've been able to spend with her has been priceless, from coming up to eat lunch with her, to dropping by the pool in the afternoon for a half-hour swim, it's been wonderful.
I consider myself lucky and work hard to keep this opportunity in my life.
5 days per working week is 15 hours per week.
Assume 25 days holiday per year which is 5 weeks, so 47 working weeks/year times 15 hours per week is 705 hours per year spent sitting in traffic...
Assuming 16 waking hours per day, you spend 44 days per year of your awake life just sitting in traffic. A month and a half? That's gotta be fun.
Assuming a working lifetime of say 40 years of the same, that'd be 1760 days, or nearly 5 years of your life you'd spend sitting in a cage, listening to Chris Tarrant on the radio.
Now, isn't that an interesting, exciting, useful, challenging and productive way to spend 5 years of your life?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I have worked for several consultancies, including big 5, who all allowed home working, mainly due to the fact that they never had enough hot desks in the offices.
Whilst for some tasks it works really well, e.g. reading documentation, writing presentations etc., for most work I find that it inhibits communication between colleagues. Communication (or lack of) is one the biggest issues that companies face. Many companies spend a fortune implementing all kinds of systems and processes to improve communication, but often the most efficient and cheapest way is to have the entire project sitting at adjacent desks. People then just tend to chat about problems, solutions etc.
Personally though my biggest problem was sitting at home by myself for an entire day with no-one to talk to. I also found it much harder to motivate myself and would often just put things off while I watched day time TV. Maybe I'm just a lazy b*stard but I don't think I'm that unusual.
Our sister office is in London. Having worked with my UK based compatriots for a few years now, I can safely say that while they have no objections about working late hours THEY DON'T DO S**T DURING THEIR ENTIRE WORK DAY.
I work in the UK.
I hate to say it, but you are right in a lot of cases.
I see a lot of people talk about football and do very little work all day. They then start working at 5 pm just so they can be seen to be working hard when the boss walks past later.
I don't do this, I work when I'm paid to work. But I see people getting pay raises for this.
A tiny 2 bedroom flat in London city center can cost £200k-£500k GBP which would be $320k-$800k.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I'm in Australia, and I telework 4 days a week. Actually, I telework about 6 days a week and turn up in the office on the other day, but have very flexible hours. I've also done some technical writing for a usa company. (free plug: www.devx.com) Situation: I got my setup as I have to provide after-hours remote support to our manufacturing sites during the production season (cotton harvest, March-July). Also, I do both development and network admin tasks, and cannot focus on the devt with all the interruptions in the office. Still being in place once a week does help the relations with other staff - even without realising it we tend to give people more credibility in person than remotely. "The office" is only half an hour away, but that's "the next town" - ie around here it's considered a hassle driving that long to get to work. otoh, half of "the office" (including my manager) is being relocated to another town 5 hours away. I got the option to choose, and chose to stay. Most didn't get an option, they were told. I started with a modem-router, then moved to ISDN, and now ADSL, which I've ramped up to the highest speed available here. (I do at times download huge fixpacks and tools under development subscriptsions with IBM and MS). Foreign Work I was approached via email to do some tech writing, by someone who observed my activity on a relevant newsgroup. I'm paid a flat rate per article of a certain size, in $US. (The jolly exchange rate movements have wiped 20% off my current invoice - dang!) This has worked fairly well, with an added bonus that I can write while my editor is asleep, giving next-day turnaround on minor edits. I have to declare the income as "other foreign income", ie it doesn't fit in any normal categories on the tax form. Actually the tax office wouldn't even know unless they audited my bank account records. Lifestyle Working from home with flexible hours has been great, as I have two young children. It meant I could be at home with #1 while my wife was in hospital with #2. It also means my wife can do part-time work. The lifestyle thing can go either way. There's the danger that you won't self motivate. There's also the risk that you end up spending every waking moment in front of the computer, working, feeling no other sense of identity. You can start in your pyjamas and forget to get dressed. (That's if it actually matters). It works for some. It doesn't work for others. Having a dedicated "work area" is essential, especially if anyone else lives in the house. It's then easy to define "I'm at work now" by which room you're in. Finding work It's just another arena for the same question - how do you find work at all? It can depend on contacts, on reputation, on spending time hunting or you might just fluke it like I did. It depends on managers' perceptions and requirements. Good Luck. I hope it works for you, but don't forget to go meet people sometimes :-)
-- All your bass are below two Hz
Starting your own business is great. . . but don't expect overnight success. I've been working for the last 3 years almost 'non-stop' apart from a change of country and wedding.
Really, it depends on your personality. Do you have sufficent self-motivation, can you whip your own butt into doing work when you'd really rather just laze in front of the TV.
It's a choice - do you want the comfort of a consistant (??) pay cheque but without the freedom of time-choice, or vice-versa.
I recently had the opportunity to telecommute if I was to become an employee of another company, doing almost the same thing I'm doing now - but, then it struck me - the most important thing to me is the ability to do as I please, I'm just exceedingly fortunate that I manage to still make enough sales.
Regards.
Essentially the deal is that the UK tax system is heavily rigged towards rich people (aren't they all, but the UK more than most), but Employee Benefit Trusts can often be utilized by mere mortals too.
If you are employed by an offshore company, and that company pay you a salary, you still have to pay normal income tax. However, nothing forces the company to pay you everything as salary. Instead, they can pay you a "low" salary (low for the IT sector) of up to about £20k-£25k a year, which will be taxed at the lower tax bands, and pay an amount into an employee benefit trust every three months or so.
Technically the trustee is independently deciding what the money should go to - that is a requirement for trusts to be able to pay out to UK residents in a tax efficient manner. However the company will recommend that the money be paid to the employee (you) in a tax efficient manner. Since the trustee is legally bound to act in the beneficiarys best interest, it would be almost unprecented for the trustee not to do so.
The net result can be that with proper planning you end up paying 15-20% income tax at most, even with salaries 4-5 times the UK national average, or more.
It could in theory be used if you're working full time for a UK company too, but I doubt they would be ready to take the hassle, as you would need to be employed by some offshore shell company for it to work.
The benefits you mention really are great. Especially if you're used to being salaried and managing your own time and working without much guidance. It's very easy to get distracted by housework, spending time with the kids, surfing the net, etc.
The only complaints I have are ones that other people have brought up: not being there physically has side effects. Other than email, the only contact I have with the office is a weekly 1-hour phone call, and a two or three day visit every six months or so. So I'm totally out of the office politics. My department used to be software-only, and recently got merged with the main IT department, so this can cause some stress. You can go in physically more often, so I'd suggest going in at least once every week or two to prevent this.
The other side of not being there is the reduced personal interaction. I'm a total introvert, so I didn't think it would be an issue, but it still is. You need to make sure you get human contact and don't just withdraw into your cocoon.
And one more thing -- expect the taxes to be really complicated if you work for a company in a different country. And expect both countries to be completely unhelpful when you're trying to figure anything out -- at least that's my experience. Just yesterday I had someone from the Centre for Non-Residents (e.g., UK expats) tell me they probably knew the answers to my questions, but wouldn't talk to me b/c I'm resident in the UK.
-Esme
As someone else has said, the best way is to start your own company and find your own clients. I know that can't be done in some cases, but if it's an option, then it should be taken with both hands.
I've worked from home for the last 3 years or so, initially in London (New Malden) and now in Telford. It seemed mad to be living in an expensive London suburb when I didn't need to commute at all. And now we are out of the cramped London conditions, next to the countryside, with NO TRAFFIC JAMS!!!
Again, being in IT, it's fairly easy to get everything you need installed at home. A clutch of PCs and servers, software, some kind of Internet connectivity, and a telephone.
With a permanent Internet connection, IM helps you stay in touch, and to be honest I probably make more of an effort to chat when i see friends & family all over the world appear on my IM list. It'll be better if ADSL is actually going to make it to my local exchange...
Telford is about 2.5 - 3 hrs from London, so not exactly a huge distance away, and my trips there (and to Reading) can take place up to 3 times a week without any problems - any more than that and it would be a bit tiring...
But as someone else has said - if you have kids, it's great. My first child I was working a 1-1.5hr drive away. She was just getting up when I left, and just going to bed when I got back. She seemed to grow up really quickly. My second child, I was working only a 15 minute scooter ride away; I saw much more of her and could take part in more of the school related things. With child number 3, he has just hit 2 years old, and he has a strop when I have to go out for the day! He is so used to me being there, that when I'm not, his whole world gets shattered.
The ability to pop out if needed, take a day off at short notice, and basically decide your own game plan is fantastic.
And long may it continue, I hope...
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