Your Business: Working from home - Tim Bentley, AUT University

Professor Tim Bentley, director of AUT University's Future of Work Programme.

It's at this back-to-work time of year when many people's minds start pondering the possibility of working from home. Rather than battling the traffic to and from the office each day, wouldn't it be nice to eschew the commute and work more flexibly to make the most of these long, hot summer days?

It's a possibility that's being embraced by a growing number, according to Professor Tim Bentley, director of AUT University's Future of Work Programme.

Bentley says one of the primary reasons is a rise in the technology - smart phones, cloud computing, faster broadband, for example - that allows people to better work from home. Another is the advent of legislation in many countries allowing people to ask employers for flexible working arrangements, which is growing a wider awareness that it's not just an option for people with caring responsibilities.

And contrary to a perception that working from home offers too much temptation to slack off, Bentley says research also shows that working from home has productivity benefits.

"The studies show that people who work from home have lower stress levels and better wellbeing. That's got to be good for productivity, which is also what they report," he says.

This week for Your Business I've been interviewing small business owners who have made the decision to base themselves from home, and a number report boosted productivity due to cutting out their commutes and having the flexibility to work during the hours that suit them best.

One such business owner is Jenny Drury, founder of Auckland-based women's fashion brand Ketz-ke. Drury says when she first set up her business she didn't need a huge amount of space, and having a one-year-old at the time meant being based from home was a practical option offering low overheads.

She started working out of a tiny home office - "like a small cubby hole," she says - but alterations to the family home have since allowed them to have the office based at the front of the house, so business contacts can come and go with minimal disruption to the household.

Drury reports having staff members based from her home office also works well.

"One of my staff members is my sister so that's really easy, and the other full-time and part-time workers have become like family," she says. "It's a comfortable situation and the girls say they enjoy working in this kind of homely environment. We live three houses back from Milford beach so it's a pretty nice surrounding to be in and there's a great view out of our office window."

I've spoken to lots of other folks in the same situation as me, and most have the same perspective: working from home is not a magic bullet, or an instant route to career happiness. If anything, you have to juggle even more.

Chris Hunter, Bike EXIF

Philip and Hannah Hutton are the home-based husband and wife operators of two food-based businesses - The Great New Zealand Christmas Cake Company and the gourmet cookie gifting service Gifted.

The couple used to wrack up almost 20 hours a week between them in commuting time when they worked in previous corporate roles, so Philip Hutton says being home based allows them to use their time more efficiently. But the primary reason the couple decided to base themselves from home was so they could spend as much time as possible with their children in their preschool years.

Most of their customers, he says, wouldn't know they actually work from home, and the couple usually organise meetings with suppliers at their premises. "And the first meeting with any supplier is usually pretty amusing with Hannah and myself, and usually one or both of the children walking in," he says.

Chris Hunter works from his home on a small farm near Matakana running a website called Bike EXIF - one of the world's most popular motorcycle-related websites, which covers the art of customising bikes.

"It wasn't a conscious decision [to work from home], but as an online publisher there's no need to have a physical office - unless you're running a fully fledged media company with full-time staff," says Hunter.

"My server is in the US, and my developer is in Australia. My main writer is in South Africa, my advertising guy is in the Philippines, and my email specialist is in Canada. For heavy lifting, I've used systems administrators in both the UK and Ukraine - the digital world is a global one."

Hunter says working from home has been a mixed bag. The benefits, he says, include no commute time, a nice working environment and being able to control things like his own office hours. But it's harder to avoid interruptions or distractions, especially when you've got kids at home.

"Like everything else in life, it's a balancing act," he says. "I've spoken to lots of other folks in the same situation as me, and most have the same perspective: working from home is not a magic bullet, or an instant route to career happiness. If anything, you have to juggle even more."

Tim Bentley, AUT University

Professor Tim Bentley is the director of AUT University's Future of Work Programme, which is addressing questions related to the rapid pace of change in our workplaces.

Is working from home on the rise?

It's definitely on the rise and for a number of reasons. Firstly, there's obviously a rise in the technology that enables people to better work from home. Secondly, legislation in many countries now actually gives people the opportunity to go to their boss and say they'd like to work flexibly at least some of the time. That option used to be more just for people with caring responsibilities, but that's now being extended and people are becoming more aware of that.

And thirdly, there's an increase in awareness among employers that it can be a win-win situation; that it's not just about the flexibility needs of the employee, but that it can also have advantages for the employer. Obviously there are space and office savings, and without commuting people have more time in which to be productive. And of course the beauty of working from home at least part of the time is it helps reduce stress levels, by saving commuting time, allowing people to do the tasks that are best suited to not having interruptions, or through just the natural relaxation that comes from being in the home environment.

And when we talk about home, that could be extended. Some people will go down to the local cafe and sit and work there, for example. It's about having that flexibility, because technology means we're no longer tied to the desk in the office. So unless there's a customer facing or other specific reason why people have to be at the workplace every day, why do we have to do it other than it just being tradition and cultural practice?

Do you think there are still fears, around people's perceptions of working from home, though? For example, around things like health and safety?

Generally I think the fears about health and safety - and who's responsible for that when people work from home - are generally going. As part of our research we talked to more than 1000 people who worked from home and they didn't have any different health and safety concerns or problems. They had some minor ergonomic problems with their office set up, but that's something that's fairly easily resolved. If an organisation could do one thing it's perhaps give a bit of training or instruction on setting up a home office. But the beauty of the home office situation is most people will work in different areas of the house, and it's good to work in a variety of situations and postures.

How about perceptions around productivity - that people just won't be as productive in the comfort of their own home?

The studies show that people who work from home have lower stress levels and better wellbeing. That's got to be good for productivity, which is also what they report. What does need to be be broken down is those fears that managers have that they need to see someone to know they're being productive; the number one thing that's holding us back now is cultural, not technological. The big thing is changing the way we manage, so we're not managing by hours spent working, but by what people are producing. We know that kind of management is more productive, and gives people flexibility about how they use their time and greater work life balance.

Things do have to change because Generation Z has a completely different way of thinking about how they work and communicate with others. Whether good or bad they wake up and go to bed with digital devices in their hands, and there's no way they're going to sit in traffic for an hour each way each day to sit in an office when technology enables them to work elsewhere.

But that phenomenon of always being 'switched on' can have its downsides too, can't it? How important is it to keep the boundaries between home and work separate?

It is going to be harder and harder to separate the two, and work is becoming more and more fragmented. Increasingly we're not necessarily going to be sitting spending eight hours at a time on a task; we'll have our work split more and more into tiny tasks, which we can divide up and do at different times throughout the day. More and more we'll break away from the nine-to-five work day and it will be more about developing our personal discipline around certain times being devoted to family life or work. But because the work, leisure and home life boundaries are blurred so much it is really hard to keep them separate.

Coming up in Your Business: Food trucks are a big trend and their numbers are on the rise. But what are the challenges and opportunities of running a portable business? If you've got a story to tell in relation to your business, drop me a note: nzhsmallbusiness@gmail.com