Comments on: Working from Home and the Transport System

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:46:20 +0000

The argument doesn’t make much sense. Firstly it is a fact that more people are working at home – at least part time, and secondly, if as Boris suggests, more people are now travelling into work than before, it can hardly be because they used to work at home, and are now choosing to commute, but for some other reason – for example that there has been an increase in the number of jobs in London. However, why more people don’t work at home is puzzling – unless their homes are not large enough to contain a place to work undisturbed.

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By: Jo

Jo — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:14:59 +0000

I commuted to London for 7 years when I was younger and spent at least 3 hours a day travelling on top of a long day at work but compared to the hours that i work now it was nothing. I now work from home on a full time basis. I am also a full time mother of a 7 year old and a baby. My day starts at 5am when I get up ahead of my family to start clearing my e-mails from my clients. Aftera couple of hours I get myc children up and get them fed and ready for their day. I then walk my son to school and return home to put my baby to bed. I then return to my workstation to contact clients and work as hard as possible whilst my baby sleeps. Once she wakes I continue work while she plays, in between time, having to feed and change her. The next thing is the school run again. Out again walking with the pram. On returning home I am back at my workstation whilst also preparing a meal for my children. It is then bath and bed time. Once the children are in bed I will continue working until my desk is clear . I will then sit down at about 10pm when my husband returns from work. This happens every day- can Mr Johnson claim to be so busy himself. Home working full of apoathy and sloth, I don’t think so. I challenge him to work so hard!

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By: Andy John

Andy John — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 14:15:23 +0000

Sorry to birng in an extra point, but isn’t the idea of “Working from home” that the employee rather than the employer suddenly finds themselves lumbered with the costs of providing a workspace ?

Sitting at the kitchen table with a PC might be fun for some but most of us would be much happier with a separate space for work. That means that the 2 bed house you were going to buy now needs to be 3 bed to allow for one of them to become an office. With house prices at the current level this isn’t sustainable.

And no, the emplyeer isn’t going to pay you more if you offer to work from home. Those savings get passed on to…your employer.

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By: Mr Moof

Mr Moof — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:43:17 +0000

Enjoyed your perspective Boris – nothing if not entertaining!

I strongly advocate home working, but also believe that face-to-face time in the office is vital too. I’d hate to drop out of the office banter, sweepstakes, gossip and camaraderie that this environment brings.

So, my view is that flexible working is about balance – choosing where you work based on what you need to get done on a given day and always ensuring that home time is balanced with quality office time too. I reckon about three days a week in the office, two at home, is about right for most people, in a typical working week.

If you want to look at a blog debating everything around next-generation working, whether for or against – please feel free to leave your views at http://www.moof.mobi

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By: raincoaster

raincoaster — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 08:31:29 +0000

Of course, we couldn’t have office affairs if we didn’t go to offices…there is that. But far be it from me to be doing the connecting of any dot-like objects.

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By: Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:08:47 +0000

The invention of the computer and the internet means that it’s just as easy to goof off at home as it is at the office.

People who do work at home end up with a routine.

Any employer who needs to check what his workers are doing at any one time has no management skills. What he needs to know is how much work comes from the employee. If he doesn’t know that he’s got bigger problems than unsupervised workers.

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By: Ron Todd

Ron Todd — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:44:45 +0000

Home working is fine for the middle classes that do interesting and creative things with bits of paper and thier brains.

For saps like me who work in a factory having a part finished unit transported to my home where I take it one step closer to completion then have it transported to the home of the person that does the next bit would never work.

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By: bgp

bgp — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:29:49 +0000

It’s Boris’s roundheads and cavaliers again, isn’t it? Most people here (including Boris) are assuming that other people experience the world in the same way that they do. Or the minor variation on that unempathetic delusion – that the average of people’s behaviours or preferences is a useful measure either of what is or what ought to be. Why is it either necessary or useful to make a judgment about how people in general respond to home- or office-working? The truth is that people will respond in different ways. You only need to make judgments about this if you intend to encourage one choice or another. Why would you do that? Laissez-faire, laissez-passer.

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By: raincoaster

raincoaster — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:55:13 +0000

No, Steven. The amount of work you do for your boss is affected by labour market conditions, particularly whether or not they’ll give you a full-time job (which they generally won’t, in North America), but the amount of work you do isn’t constrained by that. Barring situational or clinical depression, even those who are technically unemployed find useful occupation for between five and six hours every day, which is about the same amount of time that hunter-gatherers spend “working”. And it’s also the amount of useful working time that the Harvard study I mentioned measured.

People who have jobs where they sit at a desk all day and “do nothing” write a lot of novels, trade a lot of stocks, and read a lot of newspapers. They don’t just stare into space.

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By: alex

alex — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:40:32 +0000

Very nicely written as always, but completely wrong on almost every count. The numbers of homeworkers is soaring, all studies show that productivity of homeworkers is higher than those in traditional offices and that they are also happier and healthier and, on the whole, have better life/work balances. The increase in those working from garden offices underlines the fact that they are also greener – your garden office can have a green roof, solar panels, and requires almost no heating. The office is simply not our natural habitat – until the Industrial Revolution the majority of people worked from home and we are now seeing a move away from that factory-based phase. There are so many clichés in this article that it’s impossible to list them all and comment on them – suffice to say that these might be things that you do when working at home, but I think you’d have difficulty finding anybody else who shared these problems. Somebody gave you 4/10 earlier. I’d give you 10 for style, 0 for content since there’s no research whatsover done on the subject.

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