Employees working from home

How technology can facilitate working from home

You'll need to keep in touch with employees who work at home. At the very least, you should consider installing a dedicated work phone or fax line at the employee's home or buying a dedicated mobile phone. This makes it easier to work out billing arrangements and, as you won't need to see the employee's phone bill, preserves their privacy.

Always-on broadband Internet connections have made emailing colleagues and business contacts and sharing documents quick and easy. With virtual teamworking your employees do not need to be working in the same place, or even at the same time, in order to work together. Consider the following options:

• Different time, different place - employees work separately and keep in touch with you and each other via email or fax.
• Same time, different place - employees can communicate with each other in "real time" through telephone conference calling, video-conferencing or using instant messaging.
• Different time, same place - employees can access your business network or databases by connecting to an intranet or extranet. A virtual private network is a more secure, but expensive, way of doing this.
• Same time, same place - even working from home, your employees will still need to meet face-to-face occasionally. Email and electronic diaries allow you to arrange meetings and transfer documents, while wireless technology allows you to meet anywhere.
• Any time, any place - mobile phones and laptop computers with wireless Internet access mean that your employees are always accessible and can work wherever they are.

Security

There are important security issues. For example, data security could be compromised if employees working from home use their work computer for personal purposes. It's best to provide staff with a computer and make it clear that it's for business use only.

Install anti-virus and firewall software on users' PCs and use passwords to control access to their computers and to your network. Make sure homeworkers have read and understood your IT policies and know their information-security responsibilities.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• Advantages and disadvantages of employees working at home
• Types of work and skills suited to home working
• Employment contracts and working from or at home
• Kitting out people who work at home
• Manage employees who work from home
• Your health and safety obligations towards homeworkers
• How technology can facilitate working from home
• Responsibilities of homeworkers
• Here's how I manage the performance of my homeworkers and keep them motivate

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