Work from home: Good for you. Good for the boss

Many of us are seeking more than a pay-cheque, looking instead for a healthy balance between work and life, the ability to spend more time with our families or just at the place we call home. However, each morning, we are forced to enter the infuriating, time and energy draining reality of snarls of traffic, consigning the best hours of the day to fruitlessly sitting in the car.

For many, however, the possibility of working from home is becoming more than a possibility, and entering the realm of probability. This flexibility is becoming a highly attractive option, not only for employees, but also for employers, says Louis Yssel, CEO of information and communications technology provider YSL Group. "Remote workforces are becoming a reality, driven by the availability and low cost of technology, which allows people to perform their work from home as effectively as if they were in the office," he says.

"And the advantages are a two-way street; employers are warming to the concept as their information workers can get much more done in much less time. Meanwhile, almost everyone will be very happy to trade time in the car for productive hours spent in front of the computer in a home office."

Crucial to the advancement of the concept of working from home is the availability of better ICT. Notebook computers are today as affordable as desktops. That`s one essential aspect. The other is the ready availability of viable connectivity. Says Yssel: "In the past, the only option into residential areas was a telephone line - slow to the point of being obstructive. Today, 3G, iBurst and most importantly, ADSL, provide people with a range of choices of connectivity, while the pricing of these services also puts it within the reach of most households. And almost certainly, within the reach of those working with information," he says.

On top of the notebook and the connectivity, further developments in software as a service (SaaS) means the applications that people need to communicate and exchange information are also readily available. Yssel explains that with a SaaS model, a service provider invests in hosting facilities, buys all hardware and software upfront for an application, and runs it on its servers. Users access the application over their Internet connection and pay only for the actual use of the service.

"This dramatically reduces the cost of providing workers with the tools they need to do their jobs; in turn, that feeds into advancing the concept of working from home. Using this model, the company can now readily afford to equip more workers with all they need to make work-from-home a reality."

Yssel tips a wide range of jobs as suitable for a `work from home` scenario, such as sales, support and many creative occupations.

"There is a definite shift in the view of many corporations towards the mobile or home worker; we have really only seen the tip of the iceberg, especially in the large urban areas where traffic continues to get worse, not better," Yssel continues. "People at home can routinely achieve two or three times as much as they might if they were wasting precious time, for which they are often being paid, in the car. Equipping people to be more productive is a classic no-brainer. It allows people a better chance to achieve that coveted balance between work and life, gives employers happier, more contented workers and improves productivity," he says.

There are drawbacks, Yssel concedes, including ensuring that there is a suitable place to work from at the home of the employee, while management of remote workers has its own challenges. However, he remains confident that the benefits far outweigh these minor negatives.