Working in the wops

Tim Wood, a recent immigrant from Britain and IT security specialist, is looking for work as a remote help desk agent. He wants to work for the support division of an IT company, taking customer calls from his home in Whakatane and accessing customer database information at the same time.

If he lived in Auckland, his qualifications - which include a Science degree in production engineering and a Masters degree in information technology - and 15 years of IT work experience, would be snapped up for a full time position, however Wood, 44, doesn't want that.

"We emigrated on my wife's [midwifery] skills and she's now working full time. It's my job to be home based and make sure the kids are settled. There's 25 hours a week I could work from home, but there don't seem to be many IT positions available for remote workers. I don't think New Zealand is making the best use of my skills yet," says Wood.

As a former IT security employee of credit reference agency Experian, Wood was partly responsible for establishing remote workforce pilot programmes for 1500 of the firm's 3500 employees. These included executives who chose to work from home when possible, power users who were technically savvy and on call, and sales and marketing people who needed to connect from remote locations.

A smaller number were involved in remote call centre pilots. Wood says 'soft policies' around health and safety and monitoring a remote worker tend to be more problematic for employers than the technological set up required.

"A company doesn't want two sets of policies for people who work at work and those who work at home. The only differences should be around how the employee works and fit their hours in," says Wood.

He says employers need to able to support the remote worker technologically and can use software and manual checks to monitor activity and ensure work targets are being met.

In New Zealand, working from home for at least some of the day is now a comfortable proposition for employees who want more flexibility in their working lives and employers are increasingly prepared to provide that flexibility.

Providing work targets are met, the benefits of having remote workers include their ability to work outside of normal business hours; be up and running quickly during times of peak workload, and that they have no need of office support mechanisms like parking spaces and refreshments. Happy remote workers are also more likely to stay, and to spread the word.

However, employing a full time remote employee - the work scenario Wood is after - is a different matter. While the technologies can deliver, workplace practices and attitudes need some thought. Full time remote workers don't want to visit an office to upload and download necessary information to their laptop PCs or to attend meetings, they're not fussed about the people contact they're missing and they require the technical equipment, telecommunications connections and workplace policies to allow them to work efficiently from home.

An example is the average call centre agent whose job it is to take customer calls married up with customer information from a business database. To set up this work environment, the employer needs to ensure the right health and safety policies and equipment are in place for the at-home worker, and find a cost-effective way of providing a secure data link between the home-based worker and the office network and telephony system.

Among the concerns employers might have: what will the service cost; will we manage it access in-house or will our telecommunications provider manage it for us; what applications will the remote worker need to have access to; and how can we ensure that if the security of the remote PC is compromised we fix it before the PC connects to the main network?

Technologically, all of these concerns can be addressed through today's software applications and the fixed line service models available through Telecom New Zealand and, depending on area, TelstraClear.

However, the quality of an at-home office environment will ultimately depend on the remote worker's location, the telecommunications service available at that location, and the kinds of applications the remote worker needs access to.

For example, do they need to connect to the internal telephony system of the organisation to take customer calls from home; do they need access to videoconferencing; or does their work simply require them to upload information to the company database?

If the worker only has access to a dial up fixed line telecommunications service this may not be fast enough for the remote work they need to do. Similarly, access through a cellular mobile link (the Vodafone or Telecom 3G mobile networks) may be too slow or too expensive for the employer to contemplate. Ideally, the remote worker needs a broadband fixed line connection running around 2Mbps or faster.

Wood cautions that while some people are more motivated working from home, others want the contact they experience in an office . The key is to offer remote work environments only when they work for both the business and the employee.