When 'home' meets work

Jun 20 2006 By Evening Gazette

The hot potato of whether workers should be allowed to make personal phone calls or surf the Net in work time has reared its head.

Workers are increasingly sorting out their social and home lives from the office because of lack of time and hectic workloads, new research showed today.

A survey of 1,600 adults revealed a trend of "home-ing from work" rather than working from home.

The UK's long hours culture, added to long commuter journeys and increasing levels of work, means that people are keeping in touch with friends from the office and shopping during the day.

Recruitment firm Office Angels said its research showed that most people are arranging appointments for haircuts or car servicing from their desk because of lack of time.

I think that employers do need to cut a little bit of slack and allow some personal use of office equipment.

It is not so much lack of time but the opening hours of the likes of dentists, opticians or doctors that mean they have to be contacted during work hours to make an appointment.

Policies at companies I have come across vary greatly.

Some allow workers to trawl the Net for information or buy goods over the web as long as it does not encroach on work time and it is done during the lunch hour or other breaks while others ban it completely and actually block workers' ability to log onto areas of websites where credit card details can be keyed in.

And some firms have public pay phones installed in staff rest rooms and insist that workers use them to make any personal calls.

Paul Jacobs, managing director of Office Angels, said: "People tend to enjoy work more when they're allowed to bring a touch of their personal life into their office space, but it's essential employers get the balance right when it comes to setting ground rules about the encroachment of home into the workplace."

Whichever approach a company takes, the most important thing is for them to make sure they communicate their policy when it comes to this subject so that workers know exactly where the boundaries lie and what exactly they can and cannot do.