Teleworking in the UK? 301
neiljt writes "As a UK-based IT worker living about a 90-minute journey from London, I am interested in the idea of working from home, or teleworking. In the UK, however, the take-up of this practice has been less than frantic. My own immediate plan is to find work at home here in the UK, however my ultimate aim would be to find employment, which gives me the freedom to live where I choose. What barriers exist to working in the UK for a non-UK (e.g. US) employer. What about a UK citizen living outside the UK working for a UK or US employer? (Feel free to substitute your country of residence)"
"The arguments will probably be familiar to most here, but I will state them anyway, just to be sure you know how I'm thinking.
Advantages for me:
- Save journey time of 3 hours per day
- Save travel expenses
- Save travel frustration (delays, crowds, mobile phone idiocy, etc.)
- Be fresh and alert when I start work
- Feel better at the end of the working day
- Be at work promptly each day
- Work in a pleasant/relaxed environment
- Ready access to my (large) technical library
- Cost savings
- Office space savings
- Improved productivity
- Increased motivation
- Reduced traffic congestion
- Reduction in total travel and therefore pollution
- Employer needs to monitor quantity and quality of work performed
- Internet connectivity (mine currently limited to 56Kb)
It would be interesting to hear both from employers who support (or would support) this model, and from employees who have successfully negotiated employment at home.
In general, have your experiences been positive? If you have had problems, how have they been resolved? And now that the technology has been available for at least 10 years, will teleworking ever take off in the UK?"
My experience (Score:5, Informative)
A couple of years ago I worked for a fabless semiconductor company coming in to their offices (50 miles away) one day a week and working the rest of the time from home. I was already set up with a cablemodem and PCs, there was no problem doing the actual work and keeping in touch by telephone. So "the problems" have "been solved", in IT-type work.
All of your advantages seem realistic, a disadvantage you'll probably have to add is to have to carefully manage your motivation. I found that a phone call and a chat would cheer me up and get me going if the news was positive, more often in that company the news was negative or depressing and it requires some mindgames then to keep yourself pouring energy into the work and not slumping in the chair thinking "what's the use?". Being on the phone regularly and documenting where you are at in a place easily visible from the office (CVS, email project dumps, etc) can deal with the monitoring problems in a good way.
However, this company had the most amazing political situations going on. I found that by not physically being there all the time there it was easy to miss out on the latest twists and turns in the ongoing sagas, and that in such a hothouse political situation that can be a big drawback. I also found that there was a tendancy by others to regard myself as less committed, simply by lack of physical presence, even though in every other way it was clear I was playing more than a full role. So there are psychological issues in not being physically present when problems and bad or good news comes up, you are not seen to be proactive when someone else is always first on the scene to fight the fire, since the call is going to come to the office.
The advantages are clear, especially if you have children. But the disadvantages make themselves felt pretty clearly too, if you cherish hopes of getting a more managerial responsibility over time, you might find this system is not helping you towards that. In the end I quit after 14 months, when the political sagas reached a point where it was clear there was no growth path for myself (and in fact anyone else based in their UK office as far as I could see, three other people also left out of a total staff of 8 while I was there).
it isn't that uncommon (Score:3, Informative)
Try the banks (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, I'm a developer. Not sure what it's like for non-pure IT staff.
Cheers,
Ian
i'm a web monkey, working from home in the UK (Score:1, Informative)
Working at home.... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm currently managing to work from home ok, even though it's my three kids holiday.
Advantages for me are plenty (especially for avoiding pointless commuting), advantages for work..... well as a programmer I get disturbed less at home so can get more work done, it also means I'm available to do any work any hour of the day/night.
Broadband connection, VPN is essential though. I have done bits from home over 56kbps and it's not fast enough for real work, although using citrix might help you there.
To all employers (Score:4, Informative)
I think it boils down to the fact that some days, when you wake up, you just don't feel like getting up. On those days, at a company that doesn't allow home working, you might be tempted to ring in, and call a sickie. But if you are allowed to work from home, you would probably roll back to sleep for a few minutes, and then get up, and do some work from home.
The company I work for also provides me with company paid ADSL which terminates in the lab I work for, thus meaning that I can simply plug in to the lab network at any time. This has a bonus for them, as quite often, at weekends, and evenings, if I think of something, rather than wait until the next working day, and/or maybe forgetting it by then anyway, I will log in, and do some work in my own time.
I really appreciate the way this company treats its employees, and I think the motto is: Trust your employees, don't treat them like slaves, and they will work happier, and be more productive. At least, that's how I'm finding it.
I know someone that worked through a whole weekend for free, moving servers from one part of the city to the other - from 9 am to 10pm on both days. They arrived at work on Monday about 5 minutes late, and the boss pulled them up about it. Forget thanking them for their hard work (for free!) over the weekend. They quit that job soon after, and got a job with a funky little tech company, and now work harder, as their work is appreciated.
Obviously, I understand that some kinds of work can't be done from home, but I think in the majority of case, where people write documents, support networks, answer phone calls, they should be trusted with the opportunity to work from home for say one day a week.
I digressed slightly towards the end there, didn't I? But I see working from home as an example of how a company treats its employees.
I thought the term was telecommuting. (Score:2, Informative)
He can't afford the accomodation (Score:5, Informative)
Broadband (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Working (from) abroad (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially the deal is that the UK tax system is heavily rigged towards rich people (aren't they all, but the UK more than most), but Employee Benefit Trusts can often be utilized by mere mortals too.
If you are employed by an offshore company, and that company pay you a salary, you still have to pay normal income tax. However, nothing forces the company to pay you everything as salary. Instead, they can pay you a "low" salary (low for the IT sector) of up to about £20k-£25k a year, which will be taxed at the lower tax bands, and pay an amount into an employee benefit trust every three months or so.
Technically the trustee is independently deciding what the money should go to - that is a requirement for trusts to be able to pay out to UK residents in a tax efficient manner. However the company will recommend that the money be paid to the employee (you) in a tax efficient manner. Since the trustee is legally bound to act in the beneficiarys best interest, it would be almost unprecented for the trustee not to do so.
The net result can be that with proper planning you end up paying 15-20% income tax at most, even with salaries 4-5 times the UK national average, or more.
It could in theory be used if you're working full time for a UK company too, but I doubt they would be ready to take the hassle, as you would need to be employed by some offshore shell company for it to work.
I'm Doing This (Score:5, Informative)
The benefits you mention really are great. Especially if you're used to being salaried and managing your own time and working without much guidance. It's very easy to get distracted by housework, spending time with the kids, surfing the net, etc.
The only complaints I have are ones that other people have brought up: not being there physically has side effects. Other than email, the only contact I have with the office is a weekly 1-hour phone call, and a two or three day visit every six months or so. So I'm totally out of the office politics. My department used to be software-only, and recently got merged with the main IT department, so this can cause some stress. You can go in physically more often, so I'd suggest going in at least once every week or two to prevent this.
The other side of not being there is the reduced personal interaction. I'm a total introvert, so I didn't think it would be an issue, but it still is. You need to make sure you get human contact and don't just withdraw into your cocoon.
And one more thing -- expect the taxes to be really complicated if you work for a company in a different country. And expect both countries to be completely unhelpful when you're trying to figure anything out -- at least that's my experience. Just yesterday I had someone from the Centre for Non-Residents (e.g., UK expats) tell me they probably knew the answers to my questions, but wouldn't talk to me b/c I'm resident in the UK.
-Esme
Re:Thinks about the problems as well (Score:1, Informative)
Company culture (Score:2, Informative)
I switched company to be able to work at home, not because my former employer didn't allow me to, but because it was not part of the culture of that company (I would have been the first) and I expected political trouble like described above.
The new company solely exists of homeworkers, each having a small office at home usually with some additional seats so if teamworking is required you either visit your collegue or all go to the small central office (basically only two meeting rooms and a small kitchen).
One major stumbling block (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My experience (Score:2, Informative)
> can't get your work done" thing", this is the
> "it's no damn fun" thing.
As someone who used to work from home 1-2 days a week, I can sympathise with this. I got around it by partnering up with a work colleague who also worked from home and working together at either his or my house every so often. Having another human around can make things a lot easier, especially if there's always a subconscious concern of "do people really think I'm productive when I'm working at home?" in the back of your mind...
That said, having worked from home shortly after the birth of my first child, there's plenty of times when you really do want to be home alone. In my case, I resorted to getting 8hrs work done in a 24hr period, however possible; when you're rocking a baby to sleep at 2am, you actually can get some work done (even reading printed documents) and neither of my 2 kids have developed obvious social problems because their Dad read a few documents while they were dozing off with a bottle.