"For me working from home is better it gives me the freedom to choose my working hours"
"Could be done, but not geared up for it. Would take huge investment in bespoke S/W"
"I live above where I work. My office and flat are seperate, but in the same building. I strongly believe in reducing commuter numbers and conciously decided to rent offices and living accommodation in the same building. The other employees do travel a short distance to work, but I am trying to get them to walk on days when the weather permits it."
"Public transport should be improved to encourage less travel to work by car"
"Travel to work by car is a serious environmental problem and should be discouraged by all available means!"
"E-mail is only 1 method of keeping in touch, shop to home workshop"
"Working from home can be productive if the employee is totally trustworthy as they are away from immediate office distractions such as clients calling"
"I travel a lot - 24000 miles plus train journeys - and it is getting increasingly time-consuming. Working from home is very productive."
"We are on an industrial estate so parking is no problem. All employees live locally, most are factory based."
"Seen as OK occasionally but not encouraged as general practice"
"We would love too!"
"Work & live in a rural area"
"Luckily everyone can walk ! - its close by"
"Most of my employees live within a few minutes of their work-place"
"To ease traffic congestion and speed up travelling time, it would beneficial to alter school start times in order to stagger traffic volumes over a longer period. During school holidays traffic volumes are significantly reduced and consequently so are travelling times. It would also help if car sharing was actively promoted by government, so in terms of tax credits or discounted car parking facilities - exclusively for those participating a car share scheme"
"Working from home helps improve efficiency by utilising time that would otherwise be spent on travelling"
"Travelling to work accounts for a combined 7.5 hours per day - (a working day) or 20% of our total working day. However we need the status of our address and the facility for visitors etc. Flexitime could be an answer except for our need to meet/network etc at the same time."
"Working from home suits us, we have 1 p/timer, she does some work at home but does not have e-mail. This is the way people want to work now, telecommuting to H/O etc."
"Bureaucracy of VAT, PAYE and NIC does not encourage home working. Would like to see standard package of measures specifically aimed at SOHO working."
"With the newly installed ISDN links this has become a way of life we have all looked forward to for some time."
"Home-based businesses still suffer a stigma. This is paradoxical in that specialised firms such as mine may well have a superior technical infrastructure and higher investment in IT than the majority of firms of the same size or even substantially larger. Home working seems a more developed phenomenon in North America with a more developed support infrastructure. The advent of technologies such as application sharing and videoconferencing have eased what used to be the main problem of homeworking - physical isolation from colleagues."
"The roads are getting very busy and as a result more and more business time is being lost. Working from home is a way of reducing the amount of lost time. In our business (Electronics Design), providing employees have PC's at home then the work can be done almost as effectively at home as at work. It is still necessary however to attend the office on a regular basis to remain involved in team design tasks/decisions. Use of electronic data transfer and Email is an ideal method for employees to communicate with the office when working at home."
"Our offices are in a large shared building where employee parking is provided separate to a visitors car park. Many of the employees throughout the building are currently being encouraged to share the drive to work, rather than coming in separately by car to reduce congestion. Others have taken up the special funding available to purpchase a push bike. While there is no doubt that people travelling too and from work by private vehicle adds to the conjestion, it is interesting to note that the the biggest impact on traffic is school children. When the holidays come to an end there is an amazing increase in conjestion on the roads. Drive down any road containing a school (especially nursery schools) and the scene is the same, the road awash with parents dropping off their children, many ignoring the parking restrictions using double yellow lines as if they were there own private parking spaces). Its a shame the schools dont encourage parents to operate a similar travel share scheme."
"Problems found in industry in general tend to be not how the technology has let us work from home, but if the managers let us. Trust is the major stumbling block in many companies. As a country we need to start convincing those in power in industry to start trusting their employees to do the work unsupervised"
"For an Internet company not working from home seems abnormal, I save myself ten hours a week by avoiding commuting. Providing a place for weekly face to face meetings can be arranged the benefits from working from home are enourmous."
"I would like to think that within 2 - 3 years we will be able to double the number of people doing some work from home."
"We are developing a decentralised, work from home, structure to all of the business because it is both greener and more cost effective"
"The main reason for working at home is to get a report done without the usual interruptions that one gets at work. At present working from home is difficult because much of the information we use is not available electronically and the company does not have a file management system. Once we have an Intranet and the benefits of this are better understood by our management, working from home may become more of a norm."
"Things will have to change !! But have the politicians and industry the foresight and courage to act proactively?"
"We use lots of home-based associates. Permanent employees
work at home occasionally."
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