The normal working day, the daily commute and traditional work practices are all about to undergo a change of Olympian proportions according to Gary David Smith, the co-founder of Prism Total IT Solutions. During the London 2012 Olympics, organisers expect one million Games visitors to make three million journeys by public transport and collide with the capital‚ six million daily commuters.
Smith – whose company supplies complete IT support to over 1,000 SMEs nationwide, says that the practices of home working and mobile working‚ have become much more common in recent years. Dealing with the Olympic gridlock in London over the next few weeks will introduce both ideas to tens of thousands of employees for the first time. Many businesses have been forced to investigate flexible working because of the Olympics, and many will never return to traditional methods again. Home working is more productive, greener and can save companies money.
The government have made plans for thousands of civil servants to work from home during the Olympics and Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has called for employers in London to arrange for more of their staff to work from home to ease the inevitable transport congestion that will result from the Games.
British Telecom, one of the pioneers of home working in Britain, has 15,000 home workers amongst its 92,000 staff. The company reports that it has found home workers 20% more productive than office based staff as they are less likely to take days off due to illness and save the company about £6K each every year in business expenses.
‘The business IT sector is rapidly moving towards tablet computers and hosted applications, and the old business model of rows of PCs in open plan offices is rapidly disappearing,’ says Smith. ‘At Prism we have been working for some time to improve our support of mobile devices and develop security and delivery of cloud based applications. There are some pitfalls from working solely in the cloud. Businesses need to plan carefully and ensure that they keep multiple copies of data and create contingencies to work from other locations. They should systematically restore their back ups to ensure their work is safe and not place too much emphasis on the cloud having local data.’
The number of companies offering some home working rose from 14 per cent in 2006 to 46 per cent by 2008 and is widely predicted to still be on the increase.
A CBI survey of more than 250 London companies revealed that half of them will be instigating arrangements for home working during the Olympics. 57 per cent also said that they were planning flexible working hours for employees, and 46 per cent intend to give staff time off to attend events.
