Today is National Work from Home Day in the UK. Thanks to Sun's foresight, I have been experiencing this new way of working for the past seven years.
For a number of years I took advantage of Sun's remote connectivity, using 56K dialup and then later ISDN, to allow me to read email from home and avoid a 50 mile commute to Cambridge until traffic had died down. When my family and I moved to Cheddar in 2001 I continued to take advantage of this flexible working, despite the shorter 18 mile commute into Bristol. In June 2004, not long after broadband ADSL reached my village, Sun closed its offices in Cambridge and Bristol and I became 100% home assigned.
Aside from the obvious benefits of reducing commuting time, home working also allows me to see my more of my family and my dogs. But there are down sides. Work life balance can suffer as there is sometimes a temptation to pop into the office at 7:00pm and check if that important email has come in. Two hours later you can still be sat at your desk. On the flip side though, working late in the evening on conference calls with colleagues in the USA can easily be offset by taking off time during the day to walk my dogs, or ride my bike. Also, however much I like my work colleagues, my wife is a much prettier lunchtime companion!
Microsoft in the UK have just completed the first year of a three year flexible and home working trial. For Sun it isn't a trial it is now the default way of working for the majority of staff. What a contrast to a previous employer from many years ago whose response when asked about flexi-time was "Of course, you can start any time before 9:00am and finish any time after 5:30pm".
