Government wants you to work from home

This week is National Telework Week, aimed at increasing awareness of the benefits of working from home. Picture: Thinkstock Source: news.com.au

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has committed to having 12 per cent of public servants regularly working from home by 2020.

The announcement comes at the beginning of National Telework Week, which is aimed at increasing awareness and encouraging Australian employers to boost the number of people who work from home with help from the roll out of the National Broadband Network.

Ms Gillard today made a presentation at the Telework Congress in Melbourne via video-conference from Canberra to announce the increase in government teleworkers, up from the current figure of about 4 per cent.

Deloitte telework research also released today has found telework will add an extra $3.2 billion a year to GDP, which is the equivalent of an extra 25,000 full-time jobs, by 2020-21.

"With the rollout of the NBN ramping up, its affordable and reliable broadband means that telework will become an increasingly viable option for people living in regional Australia," a spokesperson for the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said.

But teleworking is hardly a new concept - workplace experts have been promoting what they say are major productivity and cost benefits since last century.

So why are employers reluctant to make it the norm?

Future of Work Foundation chairman Charles Brass said: "People have been talking about teleworkers and the death of offices and death of CBDs for over 20 years."

But he said problems with workers feeling isolated at home meant teleworking "hasn't been the phenomenal change that was anticipated".

"Nowadays working at home does mean a very lonely experience with huge social implications, which is why many employers and employees are finding it difficult to take it on," he said.

Is it good for the bottom line?

Yvette Blount, coordinator at the Australian Telework Research Network, said telework hasn't been taken up widely because many organisations don't think about the business case for doing it.

"It can't just be because 'it makes our employees feel better'," Dr Blount said.

"But if an organisation can say telework is adding to our bottom line, it's much easier to implement."

Benefits of telework include customers being able to access employees for longer hours, and reductions in employee absenteeism, she said.

Middle managers are resistant

Telework is more easily adopted in fast-moving industries like tech, media and design.

But it is likely to become the norm in some unexpected industries and for some unexpected job roles, such as healthcare, education and middle management.

Telework Australia director Bevis England said while highly mobile company executives often think telework is "a great idea", middle managers are opposed to it.

"They have a problem with managing people they can't see," he said.

"It does perhaps get a bit harder for managers to manage remote staff when the outcomes of their jobs are not easily identifiable or measurable.

"In a lot of white collar tasks we don't understand what the specific outputs are because it's a more general [goal] we are working towards."

Dr Blount said managers who have teleworkers, and who telework themselves, tend to have better teams because they make more of an effort to communicate.

"You just have to make sure that the manager is in the office for team meetings, and make sure employees know how to contact the manger if a decision needs to be made," she said.

Telework to spread to more jobs

Tim Fawcett, head of government affairs and policy at computer networking company Cisco Australia said healthcare was an area where telework would become much more widespread.

"I think we're going to see a real takeoff," he said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said Medibank Private has 1000 people already teleworking from home, providing an after-hours GP service.

"Medibank love the service – they've seen productivity go up and sick days go down. It's a win-win," he said.

Mr Fawcett said it was inevitable telework would become the norm in the tertiary education sector, even though online universities have existed for some time.

"Without a doubt, when you think of the cost pressures coming onto universities," he said.

"Why does a lecturer have to come into deliver a lecture they can deliver online?" he said.

Mr Fawcett said teleworking in all levels of government would eventually become the norm as it has in the US, where under federal law eligible government employees must be allowed to telework.

"If you're a public servant now, the overwhelming number of workers would be knowledge-based workers," Mr Fawcett said.

"In the local government area there's potentially a lot of opportunity."

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Government wants you to work from home

Dengan url

http://pesbukeronline.blogspot.com/2012/11/government-wants-you-to-work-from-home.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Government wants you to work from home

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Government wants you to work from home

sebagai sumbernya