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One Third of Telcom Staff More Productive Working From Home
Qedward writes "British telecoms operator O2 has found that 88% of its staff are just as productive working remotely, while one-third claimed that they actually got more work done when they worked from home. 3,000 employees at O2's head office took part in a program that had them to work from home for one day, as practice for problems that may occur during the Olympic Games. From the article: '“The success of O2’s experiment extends much further than just allowing some of the workforce to stay at home and work. It proves that with the right thinking and planning, even the largest organizations can protect themselves from the most severe disruptions to their business,” said Ben Dowd, business director at O2.'"
from the keep-the-pjs-on dept.
Wait, what? Why would anyone wear clothes at their own home? It's much nicer to be naked. And no, that you have a significant other to care about isn't a valid answer. None of my hot girlfriends have ever had problems with me being nude around them, and I'm a quite fat guy too.
Managers badmouth telecommuting because it more or less proves what we've known all along. Most managers are useless, redundant, wastes of space that spend more time putting on a show to justify their own existence than they do conducting actual management.
The big bosses wouldn't mind, but the middle-management types would hate this. They can't go on a power trip by bitching people out on a daily basis if they aren't in person. On the other hand, its why I started my own home based business. I don't need the 'pep talk' to get work done, and can get a lot done from home. Better yet, all the perks the boss used to get, I get.
Seriously, what is one day? The novelty of working from home would wear off after about a week and then what? I know what. You'd find me 'working' in my underwear, covered in fried chicken with several empty margarita glasses about me. My e-mails would show a very noticeable trend in typos from about noon onward...
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
if they were working from their homes in India.
Keeping workers at home saves ~10 gallons of gas per person per week. Which is 200 fewer pounds per person per week of CO2.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
the more time they goof off at home the less mistakes they make
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
I work in first-line management for a major telecom and this idea is really starting to take hold. And it's everything I imagined it would be.
If you aren't directly managing employees and/or it isn't necessary for you to have physical access to equipment, there is no reason why working from home won't work. My boss and all my team are scattered all over the country, we've never met each other face to face. All my meetings are over the phone and via web conference. Nothing requires that I be anywhere near an office, just that I have a quiet place with telephone and high-speed internet access.
We recently switched to allowing telecommuting 2-3 days a week. And let me tell you, it is Glorious. Those 2-3 days are the most productive ones I have, maybe because I'm comfortable and able to clearly think through issues, instead of being constantly interrupted by the asshole across the cube farm's ringtone or the loudmouth Sales guy on a call next cube over or a million other irritations at the office. And as far as the time-worn fears of slacking are concerned, honestly I have too much to do to slack off - any supervising manager would be able to tell pretty quickly whether or not their subordinates are abusing the privilege.
Now, this clearly won't work for everyone for obvious reasons - IT support staff, hardware maintenance, client/customer support, supervising managers; you can't really cash in on this goodness. But if you don't deal with face-to-face interactions and your work is mostly conducted electronically, there's no reason not to - that is, as long as you can easily get to the office should the need come up or should your environment prove disruptive.
Some people do abuse the shit out of it - I wanted to strangle the lady who was watching her kids while hosting a call; the kid was yelling and she was goo-goo talking to him and it was just grossly unprofessional. But most people who've been working from home have been extremely professional about it - in fact I usually never know who's at home and who's in the office.
I'm glad to see stories like this - telecommuting has taken tons of stress/aggravation out of my work week and it's had an unfair reputation pinned to it by traditional managers who think it's just too good to be true.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Working from home is a win-win situation for everyone. The company saves lots of money by not needing premium office space and the employee is happier working in the comfort of their own home. The employee doesn't have commute expenses or office politics as well. Only the stodgiest and most old fashioned of employers refuse to entertain the possibility. I gather there are some managers that just have to micromanage. Stories like these might have cost-concious companies looking for savings and this could be a way to bring jobs back onshore. Imagine the amounts of money that could go to salaries and benefits if you didn't need a behemouth building. The technology exists to make telecommuting entirely feasible.
I'm a lawyer for a large multinational firm and I can confirm that I am more productive when I am working from an home. Indeed my latest project -- working on the design of an helicopter that is open source, is being done from my home. If I was at the office the project would not have advanced as far and as quickly as it has. We already have an hand glider and an horizontal plane, and now know that we need rotors and a Jesus Nut thanks to excellent feedback and discussion on Slashdot. Finding the Jesus Nut was easy, as we just went down to an hotel where a travelling band of evangelists were staying but designing a rotor is much more difficult. We still have not found an home or an hanger for the project though we think it should not take long.
Yours Faithfully,
An Hacker
Employees that are comfortable, relaxed and happy are more productive. Better rush them back into the cube farm to be lulled asleep by the sea of mindless chatter and relentless policies designed to make the staff virtual automatons.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home
All that being said, I work for a virtual call center at home doing tech support for n00bs and the like and I really like it.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
DOING FUCK ALL, picking up their kids from school, driving them to soccer and karate on my fucking dime.
The article states "Only a third of telecom staff are productive."
I took a few weeks working from home, leading up to my wife giving birth to our second child. I'm a Staff Software Engineer for a large company, w/ 10 years experience. _I_ was far more productive in those weeks. But my overall productivity? Well, I sure as shit didn't help the new folks out, nearly as much as when I was actually in the office. So yes, local productivity (AKA me) improved. Global productivity, however, is arguable.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
home is home, not a way to subsidize and lessen a company's costs. I'm not too interested on being woken up to file a TPS report
They should choose a different industry to study. Working in the telecom industry for over a decade many hours are spent bitching about customers, managers, coworkers and business partners. Of course productivity is better at home, there's no one to have a bitch fest with.
I work in an IT support function at the current customer. Basically, it's the classical ISP "mission control" role. Since we moved buildings last summer, we were put in "flex working spaces" which means 70% of our staff gets a seat, anywhere in the building, no longer access to our own equipment and laptop computers to accommodate the fact that we don't have our own desks anymore. Also, we're supposed to deal with that by working from home two days a week. Nobody even got a company cell phone.
Your "IT support" exception doesn't seem to have landed at a lot of work places, since I hear about stuff like this a lot. Maybe you and others should advocate it a bit more, since some pointy head bosses haven't gotten it in their heads yet.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Why wouldn't I make that claim?
Actually, most of the time I claim the opposite, home has too many distractions, I'm usually more productive in the office after 5pm. But I'm also a "night owl", so I'm quite productive at home in the evening until about 1am. Just don't expect me to do any real thinking before 10am.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
So how does this work for those people who actually enjoy their place of work, and the people they work with? Where's the office banter? The camaraderie? The sneaky lunchtime visits to the pub?
What about training? How do train someone to work on your product if there's no one there to train them up and show them the ropes?
Sure you can argue that working form home does not suit every business, but to the those businesses that encourage it (i.e. O2) I would ask - how do you build a team that has never actually met?
I've worked with (and for) a number of people who could markedly improve our organizations efficiency if they'd only promise never to set foot on company property again. Heck, we could even give them a raise and promotion as a part of the deal and we'd still come out ahead.
Have gnu, will travel.
So if one third are more productive, what about the rest?
I like how the information is disclosed in a very biased manner. If 1/3 worked better then 2/3 worked worse
One day says nothing about long-term results. It really is as simple as that. Run that experiment again with a full month, then you can say something worthwhile.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm very motivational - everyone says they have to work much harder when I'm around. Can't see that happening if I stay at home.
(Poorly misquoted/munged from The Simpsons)
Following Jack Welsh's 20% rule: the top 20% should be coached/promoted, the middle 60% encouraged to improve and the (12% in this case) that can't deal with working from home should be well told to stay home without pay :-) I wonder if we are going to get to the point were they'll be a market for office space that is shared by companies. All the employees that aren't manageable remotely have to "go to the office" were one outsourced "manager" is there to babysit them?
I've worked from home 100% for over a year. Aside from my frequent conversations with squirrels and cats I am way more productive. Remove 2 hours of commuting time, give me a quiet place to work and I can do good stuff.
Make me spend 2 hours driving, $10 on gas, $17 on parking, sit in a crappy cubicle with lots of traffic and noise to distract me, no windows and see what wonderful stuff I do there.
I am disciplined so getting dressed and shaving is not a problem. I eat and exercise better, and if they need me to work late, I am here. However I don't check my work laptop after hours looking for trouble and the company doesn't take advantage of us this way fortunately.
I phone my co-workers frequently and we have several IM sessions as required. The two-way information flow works fine. The company VPN keeps it all secure.
I think it is important however to have some face-to-face time with your boss and co-workers just to get to know them. But after you've figured each other out, the necessity for smelling each others farts is reduced.