Resultados a Largo Plazo

Trust or lack of it was a theme in the interviews. Non-homeworkers were suspicious of homeworkers and whether they were really working; homeworkers were suspicious of each other, particularly where they believed colleagues had roles unsuited to homeworking and could not demonstrate their outputs. Half the non-homeworkers interviewed and two

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homeworkers suspected that homeworking colleagues were taking advantage and doing less work than if in the office. One junior non-homeworker questioned whether homeworkers had enough work to be doing it, “especially at my level, are they working from home, what are they doing if they haven’t got enough work to do?” (NHW4).

A non-homeworker described how she and her fellow non-homeworkers spoke about homeworkers:

“oh yeah I think they actually might be working from home, or I don’t really know what they’re doing. It’s almost this kind of murmuring about really what the hell do they actually do, we don’t see much of them” (NHW8).

Suspicions that homeworkers may be avoiding work were not confined to non-homeworkers. Homeworkers themselves mentioned the lack of supervision when homeworking and their desire to have an output at the end of the day, but they suspected others may be less conscientious:

“I know lots of people who work from home but do nearly sweet nothing which is frustrating because that’s not what it’s for but I think people do, and it’s not a day off, you’ve just chosen to work from home” (HW6).

Fear of homeworking was raised, with homeworkers and non-homeworkers worried about the stigma of homeworkers as lazy, resulting in examples of working longer or more conscientiously than in the office:

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“If I was at home I’d probably work even longer hours because I’d have to demonstrate even more so the fact that I was clearing the work, that I wasn’t sort of sloping off and doing house work and washing” (NHW5).

Homeworkers also worried about answering the telephone quickly to avoid colleagues thinking they were not working:

“I find myself carrying the phone to the kitchen to make a cup of tea or go and answer the door or even just going into another room I panic if I haven’t got the phone with me because I think if I don’t answer it immediately people will think I’m not working from home. In terms of trust I feel really paranoid that I’ve got to demonstrate that almost every minute of every day I’m immediately available and working” (HW7).

Presenteeism, or being visible in the office, emerged as a theme. Participants used this term in relation to managers who trusted employees to work from home, managing by results and output rather than judging based on presenteeism and observing employees working in the office.

4.9.1 Presenteeism

Once homeworking was agreed, managers valued outputs over presenteeism, trusting employees to work and managing by results regardless of where people sat. They saw this as integral to flexibility, one explained “you’ve got flexible time and within that I shall judge you by results” (MGR3). The advantage of managing by results was highlighted:

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“You’ve got more chance of getting high performing teams out of the type of arrangement because you are focussing on delivery rather than presenteeism” (MGR2).

Managers trusted employees if they were not abusing the system. Managers identified abuse by specifying outputs and monitoring whether milestones were met as evidence of work carried out. Homeworkers supported the management by results approach:

“My manager is quite open to it as long as people are not abusing the system or the fact they are able to work from home, so long as they do their work, they’ve got a product. Rather than saying I’m working from home today, at least they can show that they are actually doing some work as they would if they were sitting at their desk” (HW5).

Not all homeworkers’ managers practised management by results, but all except one believed their manager trusted them and created trust by using communication, “it’s a lot about communication between individual and managers and the other thing I suppose is the manager is also allowing the individuals to be adults as well” (HW5).

The preferred communication for making homeworkers feel trusted was informal keeping-in- touch. Homeworkers explained how they also instigated informal checking-in to build trust:

“I made a point of on Friday speaking to my manager who was a senior manager and saying this is what I’m doing, and on Monday I’d come back to her and say this is what

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I’ve done, so I made a point of doing that myself. Until after three or four months she said it wasn’t necessary she knew what I was doing and she trusted me” (HW8).

Another explained how communication made her feel trusted, “I don’t feel a need to check in kind of thing, at lunchtime I might do a courtesy, ‘hope things are going well’ kind of thing but that’s more to just let them know you’re alive rather than, I don’t feel checked up on” (HW6).

In contrast, managers had a different perspective on trust, describing the desire to check on people and, unlike homeworkers, communication was not mentioned. Managers questioned whether using IT to check whether employees were on line breached privacy:

“the ability to look at people’s time on line is difficult because is that legitimate as a manager that you would check whether somebody’s on line or not, or is that an invasion of somebody’s privacy?” (MGR2).

Despite checking up on staff, all managers believed that for homeworking to work they should trust people:

“If as a manager you start worrying about it and you haven’t got that trust then I think you’re going to tie yourself in knots agonising about that and trying to put mechanisms in place to check up on them” (MGR6).