Many of us were “gazing out of windows” at home yesterday feeling empowered by the snow….What empowered by the snow?
Many years ago, folks would have simply not been able to work at all in weather conditions like these because they could not GET TO WORK, and businesses would have lost thousands of hours of productivity and £££££s as a result. But like me, many folks are location independent, and work is no longer a place that you go to, you simply work wherever you are, and for many people this means a room at home. It could equally mean a quiet corner for an hour in Starbucks 
Flexible working offers a new paradigm to businesses around the globe – take presenteeism for example ( a phrase coined by the BBC I think), whereby people returning to work before they are properly recovered from sickness, infect other members at work – resulting in further lost productivity and more cost ££££££….Now the ability to work remotely allows folks, recovering from illness, but not actually too sick to work the ability to be productive without infecting their colleagues
Remote working – has it’s benefits and (I’m certain) it’s detractors too – what do you think – rather be in the garden building snowmen?
Hi Graham,
I was having this very conversation with an industry colleague today! As a freelance copywriter, working from a home office, I had no excuses when it came to carrying out my normal working activities this week. Life carried on as normal and the only difference was two cancelled meetings in London with clients whose staff could not ‘get there’. In both cases I offered a conference call as an alternative, but even still – the ‘meetings’ did not happen!
So, my working week played out as normal – but my long-planned long weekend, involving a lunctime flight to New York tomorrow, could well be a different story. Depending on the vagaries of the British weather my flight may, or may not, take off as scheduled.
So this is my message to all the wonderful techno-heads out there who have enabled our remote working culture . . .
When will the transporter technolgy be ready please??
Hi Graham,
Well, the weather focused all our minds on how to get work done when it was white outside and impossible to travel to work because of the 1 inch of snow on the road!
Your are right we are all able these days to work werever we have a broadband service and a phone and ideally a web camera as well. We are truly able to work from anywhere these days and the technology allows us to work at any time.
I remember however in the 80’s everyone saying that computers would make people redundant and result in more leisure time.
Well they got that wrong did’nt they!