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By silicon.com, 15 May 2009 08:29

NEWS

With millions expected to abandon the office today to mark the annual Work From Home day, silicon.com sent its reporters out into the field (literally) to see whether homeworking is all it's cracked up to be.

Over the past five days the Work Wise UK initiative has been encouraging people to take part in the annual event aimed at raising awareness of the benefits of flexible working, with the hope of increasing the number of homeworkers to 14 million by 2011, and the silicon.com team - as in previous years - gave it a go too.

Working from home demands more than the usual level of organisation - the team had to take their laptops home with them the night before and also remember to pick up any other items they might need to do the day job - such as reporters' notebooks with essential notes.

One of the biggest draws of the day was the lie-in, with reporter Nick Heath forgoing the usual two-hour commute from Norfolk into London and still able to log in half an hour earlier than normal at 8.30am.

Reporter Tim Ferguson was already on IM, wrestling with installing a webcam on his elderly laptop so that he and Nick could test some videoconferencing software. But while Tim could see and hear Nick this quickly descended into farce as Nick's creaking countryside broadband meant he couldn't see or hear Tim. Attempts to fix the system were unsuccessful, with Tim inadvertently taking over Nick's desktop for a short period.

Having resolved to try again later, the team holds a quick IM-based conference to make sure everyone has got online successfully.

But then technical problems rear their head once again, as Tim, Nick, reporter Natasha Lomas and sub editor Bethan Jones try and hold the daily news meeting via videoconference. Again while everyone who installed the software was able to log in and see each other via webcams there were issues with the sound - constant squealing noises and no one is sure if anyone else can hear them.

Tim said: "It was great when everyone's picture appeared but then we couldn't actually communicate properly which was annoying. I think the way we ended up doing it was much less efficient in terms of time than if we'd been in the office."

The team abandoned the plan and resorted to IM conferencing and, ultimately, good old fashioned one-on-one telephone calls with the editor to discuss the news of the day.

This part of the day would have been far easier the traditional way: sitting in a room together - as it seems that despite all the remote working technology designed to foster long-distance collaboration some things are still easier to do in person.

If the team were working from home every day they would have had to be far more organised about it - getting the IT department to sort out videoconferencing software and check that our hardware was all compatible beforehand, for instance. You can't just expect technology to work - especially if you're trying something for the first time.

While the technology was failing, the quieter surroundings were better suited to getting some work done for Natasha. She found the most obvious difference between working in the office and at home was the silence - "The room where I work backs onto the garden so it's quiet as a church in the daytime, just the odd bird," she explained. The lack of 'office buzz' - no noise, no banter, no people - meant it was easier to concentrate on getting on with work, she added.

"The only two distractions all day were the sound of post being rammed through the front door in the morning and a large buzzing bee that must have woken up in the front room at noon. Aside from the odd IM window popping up I was able to work blissfully uninterrupted," she said.

But Bethan missed the human interaction and found the distractions at home - such as the incessant drilling/sawing/shouting coming from the building site opposite her house - were worse than those in the office. "Even the never-ending ring of office phones is better than the constant stream of builders' banter!"

Being surrounded by countryside Nick decided to go out and do some work beneath Norfolk's wide open skies. Big mistake. Nick's trek to his chosen spot began badly, climbing the farmer's gate he caught his hand on a broken strut, tearing a neat hole in his palm. Undeterred, Nick set up camp looking out over green pastures. Unfortunately the USB modem had other ideas, point blank refusing to find any trace of a signal out in the wild. So Nick headed home, with only a sore hand to show for his troubles.

Nick's outdoor expedition in Norfolk

"Working outside might sound like a nice idea but you soon find yourself getting uncomfortable and if you're outside a big city getting a signal can be impossible," he said.

Back at home Nick found the relative quiet of the cul-de-sac conducive to getting on with work but was less keen on the frequent interruptions from IM as the team pinged messages back and forth while trying to set up Google Docs to write this piece.

"When you're in the office you can all hear each other so you don't have to repeat information and somehow it seems easier to get your meaning across when you're talking to people face-to-face," he said.

"Even in the IM conferences by the time that you've answered somebody's question, someone else has written something, so it can be unclear who you are speaking to."

While Nick opened a new document in Google Docs and sent around invites for the rest of the team to collaborate on writing this article, Tim experimented with the online workspace Huddle, which allows people to post comments on a whiteboard and store and share documents. Although the team ended up using Google Docs to put the report of the day's activities together, Huddle seems to offer similarly good options along with some tools for managing projects.

Writing in Google Docs was a useful, if slightly unsettling, way of working, with copy leaping into life on the screen as the reporters jostled for space on the page. While it allowed the team to stay on top of what each other was writing, it was little match for being able to shout across the desk to a colleague.

Natasha said the problem arose with tasks requiring team collaboration - such as content meetings - were not as easy as working in the office - and over IM things tended to be more awkward as people scrabbled to work out what the final word was.

Ultimately it seems there were just too many difficulties that came with unreliable technology, unfamiliar working practices and confused communication to make the WFH a match for the office.

Tim summed it up: "Overall I think I was a bit less productive working at home. There are different distractions to the office which seemed to take my attention away from what I was doing more. It also took longer to carry out simple tasks with other team members due to communication problems which just don't exist in the office."

It seems like the commute and those early starts remain a necessary evil, for now.