Tuesday 22nd August 2006

Working from home beats congestion

Drive less and beat the jams: campaign

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No more of this: work from home

If road congestion is the bane of our lives, then the answer is to stop driving -- or at least commuting. That's the solution from the RAC Foundation anyway.

The RAC Foundation is the latest organisation to back Work Wise UK.

Supported by Government, business and the unions, the five-year initiative aims to encourage the widespread adoption of smarter working practices, such as flexible working, mobile working, remote working and working from home. 

The RAC Foundation is supporting the campaign as it believes any change in working patterns which reduces the need to travel, or staggers the time when travel occurs, will have an effect in reducing congestion on the country’s already over-congested roads. It predicts that smarter working could cut commuter traffic by up to 10 per cent within five years. Edmund King, executive director, said: “Even if people only worked from home one day a week, the impact would be significant: just look at what happens during the school holidays.

“Road congestion costs the UK economy some £20 billion per year. If there is a reasonable take-up of smarter working, we predict that £1.9 billion per year will be saved within five years.”

Phil Flaxton, chief executive of the IT Forum Foundation, the not-for-profit industry organisation behind Work Wise UK, said: “One of the key benefits of most smarter working practices is less or more flexible travel requirements.

“Reducing congestion and overcrowding on public transport has a double benefit: not only do those people not travelling benefit, the experience for those that have to travel is far more tolerable.

”The UK has one of the longest average working weeks in Europe. “Travel is an important element,” said Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC.

“The working week figures do not take into-2-account travel time, which in some areas of the country is very significant. Simply reducing that element, or enabling the staggering of the rush hour, will have a fundamental impact on people’s lives both in terms of time and stress.”

Phil Flaxton continued:  “British workers spend by far the longest time travelling in Europe – as many as 47 working days per year (Samsung research 2004), with commuters in the South East facing an average of eight hours per week – a whole extra working day. Simply by working two days a week from home, workers would save 19 working days per year.”

• www.workwiseuk.org

[dragonship]

i worked from home for 3 years, was great at first but then i found i was working longer hours than before,including the travel time.
Also the interaction between other work people had gone, it was totally boring!

Home working is not for everyone, plus i like driving to work.

[iaint]

We had a 'missive' sent out the other day that basically has put a complete stop to working from home for both full-time employees and contractors.

Given that I'm working for TfL you might think they'd be all for the whole concept where it doesn't impare your ability to produce the goods!

Obviously it'd be tricky for a tube driver to work from home but us IT bods can manage quite easily!