With the arrival of winter and its cold and shortened days, the desire, or even the need for employees to have a better balance between their professional life and private life, the need to reduce the carbon footprint, the desire to spend less time commuting…
The temptation is great to think that Homeworking, a form of flexible working is the ultimate solution to all these worries.
This temptation is even greater when watching the news, and the need to look for a solution to the disturbances generated by the Train company strikes (France, U.K…) and the consequences on the life of people commuting to work.
When you look at the buzz made lately around Flexible working and Homeworking, it is easy to see it as a solution to these inconveniences.
Add the buzz made around work-life balance over the recent years ,and you realise how easy it is to connect Homeworking and management of those external disturbances.
In addition to the buzz, it is important to know that the UK government itself is in favour of flexible working, as per the guide issued by ACAS
In this guide, it is Acknowledged that with the emergence of new technologies, working from home could be a good way of organizing work, when looking at solving :
- Transport problems, through a reduction of the time spent in transport
- Workspace, by minimizing the need for businesses to have large unoccupied areas
- Dealing with Personal constraints of employees
- Family allowing the care of sick children and parents
- Disable staff, thanks to the completely customized workstation layout
To summarize, Homeworking, which is characterized by the flexibility it brings, for both the workplace and the employees, seems to be the ideal tool in the quest to improve the work-life balance topic.
However, the reality does not seem to be perfect, based on the results of the study recently published by DARES.
While flexible working is on the rise and encouraged, a study published in 2016 by the LSE highlighted few potential issues:
- The first one is the perception of the employee by the business, as someone less career focused and more keen on flexibility and work life balance
- The second one is the potential disappointment on both sides with
- The employee feeling that their employers should contribute to their costs when working from home
- The employer, as the temptation to feel that employees are taking advantage of the situation
- The last one is the fact that over a period of time, employees will stop seeing working from home as a perk, but instead as an entitlement.
- Spend more time working due to less time spent on their commute , or due to disconnected hours with the rest of their team.
- Are feeling isolated or lack support from their superiors or colleagues,
To all these elements, it seems important to us, to add the physical risk for the employee.
As per the 1992, an employer has a duty to look after the physical wellbeing of its employees, through the implementation of a DSE assessment process.
While it is well documented for the standard workplace, it is still very light when looking at measures taken to accommodate Home working.
However, and proven by experience, the correlation between work on laptop, unsuitable chair (kitchen chair, sofa …) and the appearance of back pain (Lumbar and Cervical Pain), or worse is undeniable.
Therefore, it seems to us necessary that
- The employer puts in place a policy of prevention of musculoskeletal risks, inherent to home working.
- This prevention policy should be similar for both office and home working life.
To conclude, it is undeniable that home working
- brings interesting benefits when looking to improve the Wellbeing at Work project, both for the employee and for the company,
- Possesses also risks and that these must at least be taken into account, or even better address
- Not a solution for all employees
It is by taking into account all these parameters that this new way of working, made possible by the technological evolutions, could be qualified as a benefit in the quest for QWL