Working from Home - How does it work?

Diceicle

Does your workplace allow staff to work from home?
Whats the policy around it with management? Do you have to give notice? Are you not allowed work from home at certain times of the month or quarter?

My workplace is looking into the mechanics of implementing a work from home scheme and I'm curious as to the policies, rules and general practice around it.

skallywag

This is getting more and more common.

Most people at my office will work from home once a week, I do it myself less, perhaps a couple of mornings per month.

It can be very useful if your normal working day generally involves a lot of interruptions/interactions, and you need to find a block of continuous hours to get something done, such as writing or reviewing a document, etc.

We try to keep it as flexible as possible, within some general ground rules, e.g.

* It is not more than one day a week.
* You inform the team you work with, and are still available for any unplanned fire fighting over skype/phone etc.
* You have a dedicated area at home where you can work without being constantly interrupted by whatever sources, e.g. kids, etc.

The last part is very important in my opinion, and this arrangement works best when one has some class of 'office area' at home, as opposed to sitting with your laptop in the living room.

All in all it works out very well for us. It may not suit every situation though, and you certainly need the team to be honest and trustworthy, otherwise it can open for abuse.

One of my sisters does it one day a week, its not monitored but she would be very work orientated, If I went to her for lunch as soon as the 45min is up she is straight back to work, her is work is very business wear but at home its a tracksuit with a jumper over it, and the best of all whe she is finished she is finished just turn off the computer no commuting he children are grown up so she had no one distracting her though.

Diceicle

skallywag wrote: »

This is getting more and more common.

Most people at my office will work from home once a week, I do it myself less, perhaps a couple of mornings per month.

It can be very useful if your normal working day generally involves a lot of interruptions/interactions, and you need to find a block of continuous hours to get something done, such as writing or reviewing a document, etc.

We try to keep it as flexible as possible, within some general ground rules, e.g.

* It is not more than one day a week.
* You inform the team you work with, and are still available for any unplanned fire fighting over skype/phone etc.
* You have a dedicated area at home where you can work without being constantly interrupted by whatever sources, e.g. kids, etc.

The last part is very important in my opinion, and this arrangement works best when one has some class of 'office area' at home, as opposed to sitting with your laptop in the living room.

All in all it works out very well for us. It may not suit every situation though, and you certainly need the team to be honest and trustworthy, otherwise it can open for abuse.

Thanks thats helpful.
Its those kind of 'ground rules' that I'd like to get detail on.
Like would people tend to work a specific day of the week from home every week?
So most people would keep a regular 9-5 most of the week? Would that be fair to say?

From my own end, the team I'm on is quite back-end. 99% of our communication with external stakeholders in via email. I think I've had < 10 phone call this year.

skallywag

Yes, quite a few people would take the same day every week, and it would usually be a Monday or a Friday. These would tend to be those who have quite a long commute, so they avoid a long commute home on a Friday evening etc when you could have heavy weekend traffic etc.

For me personally the most importing thing is being able to 'turn off' when I work at home, i.e. having an office type area where I am 'at work' when I am in it, and 'at home' when I leave. I think if I did not have this I would struggle a bit, in that you could find yourself being at home but having a niggling feeling that one should be checking mails, etc.

Apiarist

Diceicle wrote: »

Does your workplace allow staff to work from home? Whats the policy around it with management? Do you have to give notice?

I work in software, and most of my external meetings are over the videoconferencing.

In my workplace working from home is allowed. The policy is the common sense -- check that you don't have to be in the office because you have to meet someone in person, adhere to the usual security policy, such as don't connect to your work network on public WiFi, and be available on phone/e-mail/chat. Normally, there is no need to give any advance notice, sending a group message at the start of the working day is sufficient.

Personally, I prefer to work in the office because I have no separate office room at home.

Jim2007

Diceicle wrote: »

Does your workplace allow staff to work from home?
Whats the policy around it with management? Do you have to give notice? Are you not allowed work from home at certain times of the month or quarter?

My workplace is looking into the mechanics of implementing a work from home scheme and I'm curious as to the policies, rules and general practice around it.

Work from home more or less all the time, visit the office may be once or twice a quarter. In fact the office has been downsized by about 60% as very few people come in on a regular basis.

My team is located in Norway, Ukraine and Italy. I don't really have any policies other than: you must attend my morning call meeting or else my evening call (mainly for the late risers), complete the work assigned to you and let me know when you are working.

theteal

My new place is astonishingly flexible. I bring my laptop home from the office. If there's a rail alert, the weathers particularly bad, a childcare issue, I just don't feel like going in I'll work from home. No policy, in fact my manager think's it's weird that I sometimes ask if it's OK for me to WFH on any upcoming day - I'm still relatively new here, so still getting used to it.

Now I'm on the infrastructure team so we have a big list of projects to work through, it's not like we need to be in the office answering phones or anything. Any meetings can be done via webex etc. - it's a small team with members based in NY, London and Malta so VC meetings are standard.

Now there is a downside to it. I'm taking over management of the network from a team member who will be more focused on security. I've not seen him since Monday. When quick little questions arise, he's not here. I can send him a message easily enough but the response could be instant or could be an hour or two later. Just something for me to get used to.

nelly17

I do it a couple of days a week, we tend to have a weekly call on Monday morning at 9am and me and my Team update our Manager on what we are at for the week. We do a lot of Webex and desktop shares on Skype for collaborative work. Our Managers tend to work out of the office 4 days a week but its not an absolute its more about the optics for those guys I think. I'll catch up with my manager on a daily basis on a multitude of issues regardless of whether I'm at home or in the office. At the end of the day its about getting the job done most bosses don't want to have to micromanage people. If they are good at their job they know who delivers and who does not.

For us there is no formal policy on it but don't stay from the office for months at a time if there is a culture of people tending to do a couple of days a week from the office and a couple of days from home. Generally though respect it and get the job done and nobody has an issue with it.

Gavin "shels"

We have work from home available in my job, very flexible. We have the option to bring our laptops home and connect to our network or we can leave our laptops in work and remote in using RDP from your own personal PC at home - personally I usually do the latter to save having my work laptop at home just in case.

Most people in my office work from home on Fridays for example, can probably count on two hands how many people are in my office today (assume our other offices are the same). My manager used to WFH up to 5 days a week, some of our team are based around Europe so always WFH and/or use hot desks.

We have flexible working hours for the most also, so time is not an issue. Everything within reason. Same goes for logging our working time to our timesheets, if people are known to milk it I'm sure they'll be seeing the door or the company will just restrict these things.

Not having kids, etc... I don't WFH a lot but it is handy if say I've an appointment or my parents have appointments and need a lift. The only downside is.... when jobs get closed due to snow, etc... you still have to work as WFH is available

Diceicle

Thanks for all the insights so far. Seems like alot of places are VERY flexible with their WFH policies, and that its quite casual as to who and how many are in the office at any one time. That type of flexibility would be ideal for me, more so to avoid the heavy morning traffic, and possibly come into the office that bit later having done WFH for the morning.

OMM 0000

We have an unlimited work from home policy. (We also have unlimited holidays).

No rules really. Just do a good job and hit the deadlines.

skallywag

Diceicle wrote: »

Thanks for all the insights so far. Seems like alot of places are VERY flexible with their WFH policies, and that its quite casual as to who and how many are in the office at any one time.

It is getting more and more popular as well in roles where all you need is your computer and off you go. For me personally I usually need to use equipment at the office so physyically need to be here most of the time, but many of my colleagues can survive with just their computers and an internet connection.

In fact the new building which we shall move into soon will not even have a desk for everyone, it has been planned in such a way that x% of the staff are away on any one day, and they will adopt a nomad type approach where you basically sit where you like when you come in. I am curious how that will pan out, and it clearly will not work for the few who need to have a lot of 'stuff' at the desk.

How does the company manage from a health and safety perspective though?

If someone at home falls on their arse off their chair while working and decide to sue, the company have no defence.

Common sense would say it's up to the person to mind themselves, but we know that's not how it works.

krissovo

Ireland is at least 5 years behind the rest of the world for working from home, the attitudes of most Irish managers is that its the equivalent of a duvet day. Mostly because it is how senior managers treat it, days after nights out for example but these are changing I am finding. In Ireland its only just really acceptable to work the odd day but a lot of global companies are moving roles to permanently home based and reducing office space.

I have done it the last 12 years in the UK and the states and the last 5 here. When I was working in the states my company (8000 employees) had only 2 physical offices, one was the shared services support center and the other was the Head office in New York which spent most the year moth balled and only opened for customer visits. When the visits were on they asked for volunteers to attend the office to make it look full which was on full travel and expenses so we got a few days in the big apple. The rest of the staff were either home based or on customer sites a couple days a week.

Working from home is only really suitable for certain roles, most technical, development, sales, account management, architectural, finance, modern HR are good examples. Other roles can do it occasionally and its especially good when you have deadline to finish a document or presentation.

For it to work you need really good cloud collaboration tools like Office 365, MS Teams, Skype or Zoom for communication, virtual whiteboards and regular meetings and 1 to 1’s. Also the business applications needed have to support working from home so are cloud based or accessed by a VPN.

I now run a European team, I have 2 staff in Cork,3 in Dublin, 1 in Belfast, 2 in Germany, 4 in London, 6 in India. We have a remote team meeting once a week and I have 1 to 1’s weekly when I can with all of them. We have a office in Cork and use hot desks so the Irish based staff go into the office a couple of days a week for some craic.

As a team we meet face to face at least 4 times a year, we start in January at our company world wide kick off where 8000 staff attend a 3 day event . We also have a annual trade show where we all attend, I then run a couple of 3 day team events for training, workshops and team building. All staff are also invited to a company Christmas party in either London, Munich or Cork.

The rules are slack, too many and it does not work and becomes too rigid to have any benefit.

These are:
Your time is completely flexible unless customer or team meetings dictate otherwise.
You are assigned work and it must be completed within deadlines unless agreed

Customer meetings must be in a quiet room, no dogs barking or kids screaming. These are allowed for team meetings and quite often the kids become the star of team meetings or get the casting vote for a team decision.

We will be implementing a strict web cam on for meetings policy in the next few weeks.

These working conditions do not work for all staff, I have a lady in our Cork office who wants to work in the office every day and I have a lad in Berlin in a similar situation who we provide a desk in a shared office space to work from.

krissovo

salonfire wrote: »

How does the company manage from a health and safety perspective though?

If someone at home falls on their arse off their chair while working and decide to sue, the company have no defence.

Common sense would say it's up to the person to mind themselves, but we know that's not how it works.

Same rules as if I was office based, I have a annual workplace assessment just like the office staff. Trip hazards etc are my responsibility.

I have the opportunity to get a desk, chair and display screens supplied and installed or I can get an allowance to use my own.

John_Rambo

I left my company that had an unhealthy obsession with presenteeism (new excellent word recently introduced to me). I'm self employed now for the last year and I've never been more productive working from home.

The company I left has me consulting/freelancing for them now, I charge them the same amount I'd earn in three days for one day.

If I ever have to hire I'll be encouraging working from home.

kirving

krissovo wrote: »

Ireland is at least 5 years behind the rest of the world for working from home, the attitudes of most Irish managers is that its the equivalent of a duvet day. Mostly because it is how senior managers treat it, days after nights out for example but these are changing I am finding. In Ireland its only just really acceptable to work the odd day but a lot of global companies are moving roles to permanently home based and reducing office space.

I have done it the last 12 years in the UK and the states and the last 5 here.

To be fair I think your situation is quite the extreme - and the entire business is set up to support that which appears to work very well.

My company brought in an official policy around work from home, but more so guidelines really.

Try not to take Monday/Friday consistently, be in the office when needed (we have production lines so all the engineering staff can't take the same day), maximum 2 days per week, but loose enough rules overall to be honest. Management have a great attitude towards it.

I take a day every two weeks normally, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Most of our meeting rooms have conference phones, we all have Google, Drive, Hangouts, etc. to share content, and the customers I tend to deal with are California based tech companies, so it's normal for us to have calls with some of their side in the car on the way to work or at home with kids in the background.

There does have to be structure however. I can spend an entire day in the office sometimes and have little evidence to say I did any work whatsoever beyond my presence at local, unplanned meetings where others take notes or update plans. I have little to show for myself but have worked hard all day.

On other days I'm on the production floor setting up a machine and haven't necessarily created any content.

At home however, I always like to have a specific piece of work to generate or planned calls to attend. There must be a level of trust that the employee isn't dossing, and that's there for sure, but I still have the attitude of "never let it be said" (that I wasn't working) because that trust can break down easily.