How is working from home working for your business?
If you have staff on the payroll who regularly work from home, you’re not alone. Statistics released by the Office for National Statistics confirm that the trend for home working has consistently gained ground over the last decade. Across the UK, the number of people working from home increased from 884,000 in 2008 to 1,542,000 in 2018. And this rise looks set to continue for lots of business reasons including the fact that employees like it, it’s an attractive draw for potential new recruits, and it’s in step with the current mood.
There are plenty of perceived positives for your home worker employees too including being in familiar surroundings with control over their immediate environment, less distraction, less exposure to illness, no need for a long commute etc. Many individual home workers report being more productive as well.
But although home working is undeniably popular, how well is it actually working for your organisation?
With the right HR software tools and a structured approach, HR can find out the answer to that question very easily – and manage the home working element of your workforce better too.
Here are three ways in which HR managers can learn more about their homeworking employee cohort and establish how well (or not) the company policy is working.
1. Profiling
Start by delving into the HR data and building up a profile of who has taken up the option to work from home. Key elements to identify are job function, department, location (home and office), distance from work, age, gender, time with the business, number of days spent working from home each month, number of days in the office, number of days off site (not at home). Start by collating a comprehensive data set and then look for trends or patterns. Clearly home working is more suited to some job functions, however is take-up more or less in specific departments or locations? Is it actively supported by some managers more than others? Does it make a difference where the employee lives in relation to work? Are certain age groups working from home more than others?
2. Staff engagement levels
What do your staff think of the home working opportunities available? This is an ideal subject for a pulse survey or a company-wide communication – also much easier if you have an HR system in place to allow for better communication and updates to your wider organisation. If you do decide to do a survey, design your questions to probe how your employees view home working and take care to pose questions to those that actively do it as well as those that don’t. It can be as revealing to find out why some people choose not to take up a benefit as it is to talk to those that do. And you might discover underlying issues with your home working policy – or your management support for it – by asking those more difficult questions.
3. Self-service
Finally, one of the reasons why home working isn’t for everyone is because some people feel out of touch with the business when they are not located in the office. Technology is the answer here – and it doesn’t have to be complex or expensive either. Clearly work-based solutions such as collaboration tools, video conferencing, Skype and others all make it far easier to work remotely than ever before. But don’t forget that HR can also keep home workers feeling ‘in the loop’ by incorporating self-service into the HR offering. Again, the technology is now available to make HR and employee interactions much more streamlined. Managing working hours, absence and holidays, training requests and other common HR activities can all be completed using a self-service platform that ensures everything can be done at the click of a mouse.
So, what is best for your business and your people when it comes to home working? Why not take some time out to put your home working policy to the test and discover what improvements could be made?
Discover how our HR software can help and support you with creating a home working culture in your organisation by getting in touch with one of our experts today.
