I’m often asked what the difference is between ‘Agile Working’ and ‘Home Working’. They do overlap but also are distinctive in their own way. It’s a pertinent and current question as more and more employees are seeking flexible working arrangements. Many are asking if they can improve their lot by adopting new ways of working.
I describe myself as an Agile Worker who currently works from home frequently for short periods but in the past I’ve worked from home pretty much full time for periods up to three months long. I recently did this whilst working on an assignment to author an extensive training class and develop a case study. I needed uninterrupted, highly-focussed effort and I estimate that working from home allowed me to deliver a higher-quality product in half the time it would have taken if I had had to travel and work in a normal office environment.
An Agile Worker operates from any convenient location. They may use a desk in the office or a casual drop-in space designed for short micro-working spells. They are often found working in a public space with WiFi access or whilst travelling using mobile GPRS or 3G connected devices. Some are road warriors staying in hotels, moving from meeting to meeting and working throughout the day as and when they can gain access to networks. Agile Workers also work from home usually on an occasional (say one or two days in 10) basis.
Many organisations only provide a ‘light touch’ home ICT support for Agile Workers. Employees may use their own broadband connection, printer and filing system. Informal arrangements like these can seriously undermine the adoption of home working and increase security threats.
Poor ICT support combined with a management culture which encourages staff to think of home working as a pejorative term (nudge, nudge, wink, wink working from home, know what I mean) can all but stop it in its tracks. Other organisations like BT where more than 70,000 employees are location independent, provide professional support which actively encourages agile and home working where it makes sense and is beneficial to the business and to the employee.
A Home Worker works from home on a permanent or very frequent basis. It works best for jobs that can be done working physically alone and by self-motivated people that have the skills, knowledge and confidence to get the job done.
Guest blogger: Steve Gillies, Head of Agile Working, BT
The good news is that for them their work/life balance is improved and for the company higher productivity is achieved. Permanent home working can produce feelings of corporate isolation and employees have to be assured that they are being treated equitably compared to office-base-employees. This requires management to view work allocation, prioritisation, employee development and performance management differently.
The most common barriers to agile working are poor or informal ICT support, management attitudes and inadequate provision of alternative working spaces. The most common barriers to home working are the same with the fear of isolation and the fear of being out-of-sight-out-of-mind added.
Have you had any social, management, policy or technical barriers to working in a way that improves your ability to deliver value?
Or, if you manage a team – what are the barriers that you see in allowing your people to work flexibly/from home?
I’d be really interested to hear your opinions – please leave your thoughts in the comments box below and I will reply to any questions.
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Tags: flexible working, virtualisation
My comment is from the point of view of a colleague of home workers, rather than a manager or home-worker. I am the only permanently office-based member of a small team, all the rest of my colleagues work from home at least two days a week. We provide network management tools support to an operations team in our base building.
Although my home-working colleagues are available via phone, IM and email, there seems to be a psychological barrier to people who share the same office getting in touch with colleagues when they are working at home. It’s almost as if they are reluctant to disturb them and I find that often colleagues from other teams prefer to come and speak to someone face-to-face. The result of this is that I get far more interruptions than I would like, being asked to provide information or deal with work that would normally be done by another team member, whilst the home-worker misses out on valuable interaction with colleagues.
I am an office-based worker through choice because it suits my working style, but from time to time I do work at home, especially if I have a piece of work that requires particular concentration and I really appreciate the facilities that BT provide to be able to do this. However, to my mind the biggest downside to home-working is the loss of casual conversation with people in the office. This isn’t just a social thing, very often I’ve picked up on something that our team needs to know about in a ‘tea-point’ conversation yet we’ve been missed out of the formal communication loop. I don’t know what the answer is, maybe virtual ‘tea-point’ chatrooms?
The mind set change is all about thinking that the IM and video call is the social chat around the virtual water cooler. – try calling for no reason at all.
I am classsed as an agility worker however I have worked from home for the past two and a half years.
It seemed the best option for myself as all travel was near enough banned in my division in fact I have only travelled three times in the last two years to attend team meetings and a DIY2 event, working from home you do miss the interaction of being in an office environment but I feel you seem to get through a lot more work allthough I tend to do longer hours.
I have tried in the past to be reclassified as a Homeworker or indeed an occasioanal homeworker but on every occasion it has been stopped “to save the group money”. I have been told that we are now moving to Co locate sights around the country unfortunately for myself my nearest one is 40 miles away so I could be working from home a lot longer. But still classed as an Agile worker !!
I agree with Cathy as I work predominately in the office and this is mainly due to preference as social interaction is a key in developing working relationships especially in a service orientated environments. I would also put forward the perception by office working staff that are people really working from home or using the time to develop personal goals……I know in the team I work in that when someone states that they are working from home that it is usally responded with ‘enjoy the skive or day off’.
I do think that Agile Woking has a place in todays every changing environment but to put forward that the notion that if supported by good working practices and required ICT support could in fact act as a negative. The only way robust Agile Working could work is based on a a framework applied by each manager in assessing whether a job function could be done 100% off site.
I have been working from home (around 98% of the time) for the last few years. I cover operational security management for a major multi-national services company. My team also generally work from home in various parts of the UK or abroad.
Generally I don’t think we suffer any of the issues often identified as common with home-working. In the past years I have had only one team member who took advantage of the situation, and he didn’t act any differently than when office based. I find my team are happy to put in more hours and effort in return for the benefit of working from home and having some time flexibility – which I tend to allow them.
The cost savings to the individual, the company and the environment are really significant. I think they far outweigh any disadvantages. We meet up occasionally for a ‘meeting’ – which is more of a team day.
I have noticed our clients in general don’t seem to have a problem with staff working from home – the culture is changing. Maybe we are a bit further ahead in IT, but other business sectors will surely follow.
I live in Cornwall, current client is in Scotland and the main company centres are in the Home Counties and London. I also work with teams in Europe, India and the USA on a regular basis – so there isn’t much difference in being at home as opposed to an office in some far flung region.
We do not have very advanced kit or facilities – encrypted laptops and storage, a mobile phone and telephone and on-line conferencing. the strong encryption takes care of security (along with other good end-point security standards). We don’t have any sort of ‘management framework’ as such for this way of working but it all seems to flow well – and as I said before – no real issues of ‘not being able to see what people are doing’. Of course as good manager it is quite obvious if staff are not pulling their weight – its all about response, work output and quality. If that starts to suffer it gets addressed. And that should be the same – all in an office together or spread around the world.
I think all this can be summed up – just because you turn up on time in your place of work doesn’t necessarily mean you are doing a full day’s work. Conversely just because you are at home doesn’t mean you aren’t! Good management sees to that, and keeps people motivated wherever they may be.
I and many of my colleagues work from home. Its not for everyone but I have found that those that like it benefit greatly from the flexibility. The company definitely benefits as productivity is higher, flexibility greater and just the general commitment to the job seems to be better.
Trying to replicate the water cooler moments is very important and I encourage my team to ring each other up and it doesn’t need to be about a specific topic as a general chat is very important for team building, morale and development.
I find instant messaging a superb tool for keeping in touch with people and I would recommend that people try it out. It goes some way towards creating that social chat which is so important in an office.