|
The
following
article appeared, in an editied form, in the November 2006 edition
of the Computers in Business supplement of the Sunday Business
Post.
The
Future lies in eWorking
Written
by Ranald Milne
The benefits of eWorking are starting to be
globally recognised, so what are we in Ireland
doing about it ?
In
September 2006 the
Governor of Virginia, U.S.A.,
initiated a drive to get 20% of Virginians eWorking
by
2010. Given
that only 3% of Virginians
currently eWork, he’s setting himself quite a challenge, but
then he’s trying
to bring his State in line with the rest of the United States where the
latest (2004)
estimates from The
Dieringer Research Group show
18.3% of employees are eWorking (over 65%
of whom work for SMEs).
Unlike
Virginia,
Ireland
has no state sponsored push to eWorking. We don’t even know
how many people
currently do it; the last reliable estimate we had was made by the
Central
Statistics office in 2002 and at that time it was estimated that 39,300
or 2.3%
of those questioned worked from home using a computer with a
telecommunications
link.
 So
why
are we so slow on the up-take?
It’s
not that the
benefits aren’t recognised. Feedback from Europe
has been available for years from projects such as the Flexwork project
(2001),
the Emergence project (2002) and Sustel (2003) plus local projects such
as the
eWork Action forum (2000) and the Ease to eWorking project (2003). All
have
reported that not only does eWorking save employers money and make them
more
competitive (see side panel), it’s popular with employees and
good for the
community.
It
shouldn’t be the
cost. It’s generally accepted that the set-up costs of about
€5,000 per eWorker
are recouped within one to two years. Plus there are grants to cover
most of
the set-up costs associated with eWorking available to export
businesses.
It’s
probably not because
of employee resistance. In 2000 the ICTU estimated that 39% of the
Irish
workforce would like to work from home. The European commission last
month
issued an estimate that two-thirds of Europeans of
working age are interested in teleworking.
 Possible
explanations put forward for our lack of enthusiasm are,
- the lack
of broadband (Ireland
remains one of the worst served countries in Europe)
- general reluctance
to embrace IT solutions
- management
resistance (the sneaking suspicion that if you can’t see your
staff they’re
probably skiving off)
- a mistaken
belief that eWorking only works for large companies (evidence suggests
that the
reverse is closer to the truth)
- a general
lack of know-how. eWorking isn’t a plug-and-play option and
needs to be
properly managed.
And this lack of
know-how isn’t helped by the fact that the Department of
Enterprise, Trade and Education
(DETE) seems to have stopped actively promoting it; which seems odd,
given the
potential side benefits of eWorking such as improved work/life balance,
reduced
traffic, reduced petrol consumption, reduced road construction and, of
course,
decentralisation.
The
report from the workplace of the future
forum which was launched in Dublin
last year identified flexible working (which includes eWorking) as
having a
positive effect on workers experience and concluded that “Work/life balance
initiatives in organisations will be important in attracting talent,
retaining
key staff and building capabilities for competitiveness.”
But
since then there’s
been no new eWork initiative. This may be partly explained by the fact
that
after 3 days of calls and e-mails to the DETE, the
Taoiseach’s Office and Enterprise
Ireland,
trying to discover which section of government is currently responsible
for
eWork policy, the last contact in the chain closed the loop by telling
me it
was the responsibility of the first.
Patricia Callan of the Small Firms Association told me that she
hasn’t had any
enquiries from her membership about eWorking in three years. It was the
end of
2002 that the eWork Action forum was wound up. Coincidence?
In
the meantime the U.S.
and Europe
continue to push ahead. More than 15% of Denmark’s
SMEs have fully
home-based eWorkers. The other Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and the U.K.
aren’t far behind.
Is
it time for us to
join in ?
Ranald Milne is Managing Director of
Tri-Cubic
Consultants Ltd., who provide guidance and practical assistance in
eWorking.
www.eworksolutions.ie
eWorking,
a.k.a. Home working, teleworking, telecommuting or
remote working refers to employees who are
set up by their employer so that they can work from home (or somewhere
close-by) instead of having to come into an office.
|
