Sponsored by
The benefits of bringing it all back home
IT'S every office worker's dream. The chance to work from home to avoid snarl-ups on the roads and to rarely have to see the boss.
And according to a report being launched today, the more of us that are allowed to work from home, the less congestion there will be on the roads.
A pilot study carried out by Hampshire County Council, and looking specifically at the public sector and small-to-medium-sized enterprises, found that 100 staff recruited for the trial travelled nearly 80 miles a week less.
This was because 70 of them drove to work each day and normally found themselves in traffic jams.
This equates to a potential 4.2 million miles saved per month in Hampshire and 21 million miles across the south east per month.
The project, called MATISSE – Mobile and Teleworking Initiative for a Smarter South East – lasted six months. The hope is more employers can be encouraged to go down this route.
The findings suggested that with the wider use of 'teleworking' there would be fewer cars on the roads, particularly at peak time, but a 'do-nothing' approach risked gridlock.
This would be because there would be many more cars on the roads as thousands more people come to live in Hampshire over the next 10 years.
The project discovered that not only was there potentially less congestion but the staff involved suffered less stress from the daily commute, less commuting costs and improved productivity, with between 75 per cent and 85 per cent of the trialists saying that teleworking had made them more productive.
Councillor Michael Woodhall, responsible for economic development at Hampshire County Council, said: 'Heavy traffic at the start and end of the day could be significantly reduced with fewer people coming in to work at the same time, which would also lower the impact that heavy travel has on the environment.'
For a business, increased use of teleworking could save the firm money because there wouldn't be the need for such large premises.
Hampshire County Council said this could mean saving of about 1m a year.
Working from home can also be seen as a way of attracting and retaining staff because it offers flexibility in a job.
Peter Sinclair, head of programme delivery at the South East England Development Agency, said: 'For younger workers this is becoming a major criteria in their choice of people to work for.
'For instance, young fathers are wanting to take a much greater share of family responsibility and are demanding a more flexible approach – and the good employers are seeing they need to take this into account in retaining key staff.'
jeremy.dunning@thenews.co.uk
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Portsmouth
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: -4 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 4 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North
