Is this initiative...
...sponsored by Kleenex ?
I can see no other beneficiary.
Anywhere Working, the government-backed initiative to get us chipping in towards the cost of offices, now has a working website hub portal and advice on picking the perfect fountain. The scheme was launched in November by then-transport minister (and Lib Dem) Norman Baker, who's now been replaced by the Conservative Justine …
The environment benefits, we don't use as much fuel, as much building space (not as many offices needed), as much road space, as many cars.
Companies save a vast amount of money - if I don't need to go into the office daily I don't need heated/cooled office space, office furniture, office phone, office electricity or enough wage to pay the horrendous cost of transport (bikes are not an option when housing near my work is prohibitively expensive, and there is no public transport that can get me the 30 miles in under 6 hours (both ways).
Kleenex might lose out as well from the lack of germs spreading colds around the office environment.
Frankly my day job could just as easily be done from home but this company - like my previous one - and the one before that - seem to think people only work if they are in the office - something that my typing here proves is not a failsafe!
In fact on the occasions I have worked from home I've been far more productive as well as cheaper.
And before anyone says about heating and lighting your own home instead of the office - for anyone with family at home having your office there doesn't make any difference to heating / lighting costs as the house will have some heating and lighting whether you are working there or not. Indeed even if all kids are at school and wife works then the lights are most likely off in your office during daylight hours (unlike the lights in your office - my desk currently has 6 strip lights illuminating it). The heating is most likely on in the morning and again in time for the kids arrival from school in the winter - so most of the day anyway. In the summer you will probably open the window rather than strike up the air conditioning. The ceiling of your home office is probably also lower than the one provided in the office block (not mentioning the 2' or more above what you can see an the 1' or more under your feet) and thus takes less heat/cooling anyway. Of course theres also the huge atrium and entrance hall most offices are faced with. And the traffic jams...
Lots of benefits but not for the UK governments fuel tax revenue, car companies, builders or light bulb makers.
I'd love to work from home, but it's just a pity that those pesky items you buy in shops need some way of being manufactured and delivered. If only I had a fucking matter-transporter, so I could shove all of my stock, from my factory, into the shops, without having to drive a fucking large, fuel drinking van around all day.
Whats that transport minister? You want all comercial vehicles electric by 2018? Including the ones that need refrig / freezer units?
Fucking lol.
On second thoughts.. maybe getting all the commuters off the roads will reduce diesel prices, as we won't need as much. Ahh.. no that's right, once we happily pay the price, it'll never drop.. don't expect pump prices to drop from this.
Alan, I think you may have missed the point of the website mate, I've used it to help some of my colleagues work from home. Obviously it's not for everyone, as a teacher would have a hard time running a class room of students from home.
This has been very useful for my company, as we have a number of field based sales and marketing staff who feel that they have to travel into London to our head offices. This website has helped demonstrate how their time can be better used by working from home or making better use of flexible workspace locations.
All the best mate
There's no need to convince the workforce that working from home is a good idea.
I'd happily switch jobs to one that would allow me to work from home.
If they are serious about this, they need to strongly target the employers to convince them to accept and encourage remote working. Currently, the view is that if you're working from home, then you're obviously skiving, "lying on the sofa and flicking yourself off to Trica" as the saying goes.
>Currently, the view is that if you're working from home, then you're obviously skiving
I don't think that is the main problem. The main probelm is that the status of managers is measured by the number of people they have under them. Take people out of the office and it looks as if they have nobody to manage. Once there's nobody to manage their job is in peril. I've had a number of jobs where at varying times my offical job title could have been "Senior Seat Warmer". Got to be senior, that way the manager feels more important.
Tax reduction? We can't have that. If you are working from home then a portion of your home is now a commercial premises. That means you have to pay business rates on that portion. Oh yes, and full commercial rates for gas and 'leccy used in the performance of your commercial activities. And don't even think about putting out any waste in either your normal bin or the recycling bin. That's commercial waste, even if it's for recycling. You have to pay for a commercial rubbish collection for that.
And don't forget the cut the insurance company will require. Household insurance isn't going to cover business activities in the home,
Maybe we'll end up as a nation of self-employed contractors with no sick pay or holidays or employment rights. Oh, wait....
... having large numbers of people work from home will cause a significant loss of business rates that will have to be recovered somehow. Probably by taxing people who work from home.
Anyone notice that one of the flexible "Anywhere Working" case studies is the London Symphony Orchestra? It's difficult enough getting an organ to synch up with an orchestra in situ, I can't help feeling the conductor's going to have a hard time when all the players are Skyped in.
Claimed that they were interested in what work you delivered on time not where or how you did it. As long as your Friday tasks were all done then you acheived what was needed so who should care about the nap. What would you have done in the office - shuffled paper, read the web?
There are other people of course (including me) who when they run out of tasks go and see what else they can do. While I'm skiving on here my machine is busy programming my latest 'defect fix' for testing...
Let's see...I had to pay for high-speed broadband (and government rules limit how much I can reclaim). This is consumer grade and there's no SLA, I simply cannot afford a "proper" connection.
I have to heat the home all day (more CO2).
I have to run all the PCs at home (I cannot reclaim those costs).
I still have my motor vehicle (so that fixed cost is still there).
IMHO working from home is a net environmental and fiscal cost.
Well, you could try asking your employer to contribute to the extra costs. Make sure you ask them about employers liability insurance while you're at it though.
And even if you don't get any cash from them, what is the cost of extra heating, comms etc. compared to the commuting costs you save and reduced costs of making a sandwich/coffee in your kitchen rather than buying them from some commercial outlet etc. Also less wear and tear on work clothes as home workers can sit in their underwear if they want. (Although I had a friend who did several days a week at home who found he had to put on a shirt and tie or his brain didn't reckon he was 'at work' - odd)
I've already talked to my employer - they are blocked from doing anything more due to taxable benefits.
I have a very efficient mode of transport, it is half the price of public and (probably) less polluting. I never worried about jams. The monthly cost increase of the comms is about twice my monthly transport costs.
As for food, I always took a packed lunch.
I was more trying to point out that this site does not account for lots of factors and the assumption of "You're at home, you're green/saving" is facile, disingenuous and misleading at best.
Cobblers is the best description of that. Having the tools required for work is not a taxable benefit - even if those tools are available at home.
If your transport costs really are that small then you are either miscalculating or you are walking to work. The packed lunch still requires you to buy a lunch box or bag to take it in.
The costs to the environment of you being in an office are still massively higher than the cost of you being at home due to the cost of the heating/cooling provided for the much larger volume around you at work than you will have in a house. Especially given the very poor insulation provided in most offices.
a) I bet you have the broadband anyway - and besides, just how much of the time do you need to be online rather than actually working?
b) It is not more CO2 to heat your small home office than it is to heat the huge volume of air that surrounds you at work - including that 1' under your desk and the 2' above the false ceiling that is higher than your home ceiling anyway, not to mention the massive 1m gap you have to walk down, your share of the fire escape and stairs... Anyhow, most people have their house at least partially heated most of the day for wives, kids etc. And don't forget in the summer you will open your window not put the air conditioning on.
b) The cost of running a PC in terms of electricity is pretty damned small - even if you can walk (shoe leather) or ride a bike (tyres, maintenance) I suspect the cost of that is dwarfed by your petrol(or diesel don't be smart) or bus/train fare.
c) True the fixed cost of having a car will still be there, but with lower mileage you can get cheaper insurance, with lower mileage the depreciation is less, the maintenance less, cost of tyres, oil, and of course the massive FUEL saving is there
d) You clearly haven't really thought the environmental cost through at all have you? As for fiscal - well the government will have to find a way of replacing that fuel duty and VAT you save, but iy is still cheaper for you if they bump your income tax up to cover the loss - for them to collect 200 in fuel duty means you need to earn 300 or so, for them to collect 200 in income tax you need to earn 200. (Bit like the reason to get rid of council tax).
Most people already have broadband at home...
Also no reason to run lots of computers at home, i just use a single laptop and connect remotely to servers at work...
You still have your car, but you won't need to buy as much fuel for it... I assume you still use your car for purposes other than commuting.
The costs of heating (or in the summer, cooling) and the negligible costs of powering the laptop are pretty minimal compared to the financial and time costs of commuting to work...
It takes me an average of 2 hours/day to commute, assuming theres no delays... It costs about £10 in train fares, and in exchange for that i get to sit on an uncomfortable train, followed by an office which is noisy, uncomfortable, full of distractions and forced to compromise on environmental conditions...
Here i am at 6pm commenting on this story, had i been commuting i would be sat on a train in a tunnel listening to music and staring out the window.
"Most people already have broadband at home..."
True, but that doesn't mean it's suitable to facilitate home working, e.g. living in the sticks and getting a connection marginally better than dial-up most of the time (despite supposedly being 2Mb/s), not really fast enough to be able to run RDP ...
If the Government had any sincerity in their desire to get people out of cars, stop trying to pitch public transport, it's as desireable as spending time in a public toilet on a Saturday night, and instead encourage employers to to implement truly effective home working environments. You'll reduce stress, wasted resources in people sitting in traffic jams, make the roads faster flowing (due to less traffic) and given the cost of public transport or fuel, it will probably be cheaper for the employee.
Maybe the way to do this is to give grants to get companies to adhere to a target (say 20% of all work done from home) and possibly penalise those that don't achieve a minimum standard (5 or 7%). Obviously in the case of manufacturing, shiop employees etc. this would not apply, but for most administrative and desk based work, I can see little reason why this would prove a technical problem, more a cultural issue for old fashioned bosses, and amployyes who want to be seen by their management.
Personally speaking, I worked from home full time for 6 years, and now work form home a couple of days a month, and far prefer it to working in an office, no travel, no distractions from banal conversations with others and a better working environment. Why would anyone reasonably want to maintain the office work paradigm?
WFH :)
If I could do this 3 days a week Id save £2176 a year and 468 hrs a year just in commuting costs and time.
The ££ isnt that much a big deal but 9hrs extra time a week would be most usfull. Not to mention the fact I wouldnt have to get up at 5:30am to get in for 8am - Not being f*cking knackered every monring would make me hell of a lot more productive.
The problem is its seen as a skive, and to many people do take the p*ss
IT - Because almost everything can be done remotely
I work from home, workspace macro keeps me logged in and working, great fun, though my contract is coming to an end and I have nothing to do so all's fair. In seriousness I have worked from home in my last 3 jobs and found that I work longer hours (without overtime) and actually get more done, best to use remote desktop instead of some shitty citrix portal...
How many people in the UK are 'self-employed' working from home and yet get paid by the very same company month in month out. How do these companies and individuals get away with it? It's become a popular tax avoidance scam that allows companies shirk other obligations too.
But if it helps UK Plc promote itself as a country of flexibility.... because lets face it, we're unable to promote ourselves as a country of investment, or a country with a highly skilled workforce, or highly literate, or a country of graduates, or multilingual, or neutral, or decimal!!...Might be OK for some industries and skilled roles, but it's a grim thin end of the wedge for the lower paid.