Professor Bill Doolin and Dr Laurie McLeod of AUT's Business School are conducting a research project on "anywhere, anytime" working. Doolin says that with people living increasingly mobile lives, it is natural they want to extend this flexibility to work. "They are responding to increasing demands on their time and changing expectations about desired lifestyles and career structures."
Doolin says, however, that while many organisations are aware of the benefits of flexible working, at least in terms of recruitment and retention, organisational practices are lagging behind technology-mediated changes in non-working life. He says there is often a degree of inertia to overcome in developing and implementing such programmes in organisations.
A key issue for employers is the perceived "lack of control", says Dallimore, along with a perception that a flexible or remote workforce is less productive. Other issues raised by employers are the costs of equipment to facilitate working at home, the negative impact on organisational culture if all employees do not benefit equally, and personnel costs associated with the number of staff needed to maintain coverage.
Employers say there are management costs such as investigating and implementing new work-life balance policy systems, and training costs associated with changing processes or culture. They say flexible working puts a greater burden on managers and supervisors, who need new skills to manage remote employees.
And while employees may be imagining the benefits of avoiding the daily commute and working from home in their pyjamas, Dallimore says there are negatives to remote working in that employees can be "out of sight, out of mind" in terms of promotions, career and training opportunities, and can suffer social isolation.
McLeod says the importance of maintaining face-to-face interaction to avoid social or professional isolation was a finding that emerged from their research.
"While remote and digital working did offer flexibility, they tended to be balanced with the proactive creation of opportunities for human interaction," she says.
Activities that would assist employers in effectively managing a flexible workforce, says Dallimore, are automated performance metrics, constant "employee driven" communication via phone, email and webinars, regular site visits, newsletters, email updates, video conferencing, performance-based remuneration, self-paced training programmes, and unexpected quality audits.
A major concern for employers is gauging the productivity of remote workers, and Dallimore notes that employers need to ensure productivity is not compromised.
"Although three-quarters of employers agree that flexible working arrangements provide a positive return on investment, they are divided as to the impact of flexibility on productivity. One in three agrees there is an inverse relationship between flexible work arrangements and productivity, whereas 39 per cent disagree."
McLeod explains that systematically measuring productivity changes as a result of flexible working is not common or straightforward.
"However," she says, "both employees and their managers in our research tended to perceive that flexible working was as productive as or more productive than the previous work arrangements. In many cases, the roles that involved flexible working were output driven rather than input driven."
One way of ensuring flexibility is to freelance. In OCG's report, freelancing was seen as providing more freedom for people to work wherever and whenever they like, to work on more interesting projects and to travel while working.
Karen Queller, 24, works online while travelling the world and urges others to follow suit. "I want my life to inspire other people to live how they want," she says. "People have a lot of fears that hold them back from doing what they really want and I think many people would love to travel and work at the same time."
