By Andy McCue, 12 May 2005 17:25
NEWS Almost half of remote workers feel alienated from office life, underappreciated and mistrusted, according to a new study by IBM and the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The study of 351 remote workers in 29 European countries revealed that 40 per cent felt disadvantaged because they could not tap into 'water cooler' conversations and informal office networking.
Nearly 40 per cent also felt their office colleagues believed they were not pulling their weight while working from home, even though 61 per cent said they actually find it difficult to switch off from their work at home.
There still appears to be widespread suspicion about remote and home working, with 68 per cent of the respondents saying they did not believe their company advocated mobile and flexible working.
Eric Lesser, associate partner at the IBM institute for business value, said companies need to better prepare both office-based and remote workers for working in an increasingly virtual environment.
"Remote workers do feel at times isolated and companies need to take a proactive approach to make sure the workers feel involved. There is lots of opportunity to lose context this way and lose body language, especially when you rely on email too much," he said. "People also really believe their colleagues don't trust them working remotely when actually many are over-compensating at home."
Lesser said it is a trust rather than a technology issue but added that as bandwidth costs continue to drop it will enable wider use of more interactive and collaborative technologies such as video conferencing.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Chris Preston
Remote workers are almost always equipped with broadband where available and for just £250 a videophone can also be provided. This would allow remote workers to be more involved as the process is spontaneous and requires no specialist training.
2. David Hawkins
Well, surprise, surprise!
Remote working is fine for those with a fixed task that doesn't require interpersonal communication.
And absolute self-motivation.
Say 5% of all work???
3. zzzztj
This is another argument akin to the UNIX vs Windows one... What? I hear you say....
Well, In the same way that I wouldn't trust my back end to Microsoft, I wouldn't want to try and write my documentation in the office. I've had to attempt this before homeworking was available to me, and I spend 8 hours at the water cooler in the office, then have to come home and work another 8 hours to keep on top of my duties.
To put this the other way round, my experience of office products on Ultra 5s is less than satisfactory, and lets face it we're out of the days of win98. A properly looked after XP unit runs word/excel and everything with very few problems (for me anyway), but if I need to communicate, discuss, plan: then a well orchestrated meeting in the office is just the job.
My point, and I've said this consistantly for many years - and seem to be ignored consistantly - is horses for courses. Pick and choose the most appropriate method/approach for the job in hand.
It really is that simple....
4. anonymous
From my perspective, less cooler talk equals less gossip, equals less internal turmoil,equals happier managers with more empoyee production.
I don't feel an obligation to teach them how to develop their social life from their home base.