By Simon Gutschlag
Today’s subject is Teleworking. Teleworking is about using faster broadband to let people work from different locations – not only say, from home but pretty much from anywhere around the world. During the Gigatown competition, this was one of the things a lot of people were getting excited about – how we could dramatically change employment opportunities here in Nelson with a superfast internet. Picture being able to use your skills from Nelson for a large company or a diverse organisation that you really want to be involved with, but wouldn’t have had the opportunity ordinarily – that’s the sort of opportunity teleworking allows.
So teleworking – what is it and why are we not already seeing it wide-spread? I’ve been in touch with a self-professed expert in the subject, Bevis England, and I’ve borrowed some information from his very informative website to help give you a case for why it should be more accepted and used. To help frame the subject, Bevis defines success for companies in this area as: “Achieving our objectives by enabling, supporting and effectively managing the performance of work in non-traditional work places“. Here are some stats:
In a recent US study, 85% of office workers work remotely at least a month, and 40% of US organisations have some form of teleworking policy
New Zealand research has shown productivity increases of between 10 and 20%
A Gartner study of British Telecom showed that telecommuting staff worked on average 11% more hours than office-based counterparts
An average of 6 days less absenteeism per teleworking staff member due to less sickness and less stress
Savings of up to $12,000 per employee by teleworking 2 days a week over a year
New Zealand tele-work week in 2012 was participated in by 35 organisations and the transport savings were around $35,000 by working 2 days from home/remotely.
Benefits of Teleworking include:
A better job of balancing work with personal obligations (remote workers are better placed to deal with sick children etc and balancing professional obligations)
Potentially improved productivity
Greater employee satisfaction and, therefore, greater staff retention
Sizable reductions in overheads for the employer
Morale generally higher (some have reported as high as 75% better when teleworking)
Less environmental impact of transport
Cost savings in office space
There are a number of really good reasons for teleworking and yet in New Zealand anyway, there still appears to be a bit of stigma associated with it. The big drawback seems to be trust. How do employers get that level of trust that their staff will work well from home and produce good results when they are not in the office. One solution is the increase in video technology – as someone who uses Google Hangouts almost daily and manages a number of daily/weekly video conference interactions – the ability to see someone on the end of a laptop or phone or tablet becomes second nature after a while and is also a good tool for team bonding and professional interaction.
We don’t see enough of this in Nelson. There is an abundance of talent in this region that people outside of Nelson could utilise if they were prepared to allow staff to telework. There are some minor examples of this happening but the numbers are small and don’t illustrate the potential of the concept.
NDFS would like to have more conversations about this topic in future and possibly even a public forum to discuss the topic sometime in 2015. Please get in contact with any ideas/thoughts/feedback.
REMINDER – GrabAGig – do you know about it? Have you registered? Do you want to take part in the Dragons-Den type judging event? go to www.ndfs.org.nz for details. The judging event is on December the 2nd and submissions close 25 November.
