13 May 2008

It's National Work from Home Day's 3rd birthday

UK bosses wonder "Where is everybody?"

May 15 will be the 3rd annual National Work from Home Day in the UK – and could be the largest mass absence from work for a generation. Event organizer, Work Wise UK, estimates 5 million people will stay at home on May 15.

Working not skiving
A spokesperson for the event says, “None of them will be making excuses and none of their employers will be accusing them of skiving.”

Building on the success of Work Wise Week 2007, National Work from Home Day will launch Work Wise Week 2008. The week’s media events will cover several aspects of smarter working practices, culminating with the Work Wise Summit 2008 on May 21.

Supporters of the Work Wise UK campaign include business, transport and trade union associations, BT, Equal Opportunities Commission, Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, Technology Means Business and Henley Management College.

Smarter working downloads:
Transport for London: agenda, positioning, guide and press release.
Institute of Directors: flexible working survey results and downloadable factsheet
Economist Intelligence Unit: Sustainability in the British Workplace
Work Wise UK: a not-for-profit initiative, organized by the IT Forum Foundation, to promote smarter work practices – flexible, remote and mobile working – and working from home. Its objective is for half the UK’s working population, some 14 million people, to be given the opportunity to work smarter by 2011.

Have your say
Most people support the idea of flexible working – and lots of us like our “working from home” days.

No travel means more time for work tasks, while less office interruptions mean more productive time.

You can even do some household chores at the same time, like running the washing machine.

But what effect does all this flexibility have on communication processes? Once we knew where to find staff if we needed to contact them – to send information, get feedback, or engage in dialogue. Now they could be anywhere.

Social media provides some of the answers, but does flexible working weaken the organization’s cohesion? Does it make the communicator’s life more difficult in terms of ensuring messages are consistently understood?

Discuss these issues with other comms practitioners by joining the Internal Comms Hub members' group on the Communicators' Network.

Other recommendations:

Work-life balance effects ethics, survey says
How will tomorrow's employee behave?

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