The spread of Teleworking

How widespread is teleworking in Ireland does anyone know ?

I'm talking about office jobs where most work(if not all) is done via email/networks/phones.

Would it be presumptous to expect that when most people would have broadband-enabled homes, that most companies who it would suit (the so-called 'cube farm' type of places) would offer it as part of a contract of employment ?

The m50 carpark must make most people consider it.

It occurs to me that once companies are truely able to work by employing workers in their own homes, then why pay an irish worker when you could get an Indian/Hungarian to do the same work more cheaply?

Dear Pique

I was involved in a research project with the CSO in 2000 to 2003 funded by the EU called STILE which looked at how to measure teleworking and included an add-on module to the Labour Force Survey that is I think still available on the CSO website or you can try contacting the person who worked on the project in the CSO, Nicola Tickner ,or PM me and I will email you the PDF file of the results.

It's harder than you think to measure. First of all you have to agree what you mean by teleworking - in fact full time home teleworking is pretty rare. But working in different places using technology is not. Pretty much most people these days do some work outside of the office on the move or in different workspaces.

I also co-wrote 4 editions of the Teleworking Handbook for the UK Association. My personal opinion is that Ireland has a very face-to-face management culture and fewer workers in the sectors which are most suited to teleworking and this mitigates against the M50 effect. Although we have a lot of people supposedly in IT they are eg call centre workers (a highly supervised occupation which although amenable to homeworking generally prefers to concentrate or outsource overseas) or production workers. We don't have lots of professionals, and international figures indicate that teleworkers are predominantly male middle aged highly educated people who work in the professions, not the stereotypic woman clerical worker at home with toddler crawling around feet that magazines are so fond of.

We also don't have the UK laws on family friendly policies - that would be helpful... There are however very few legal or practical problems other than broadband access in Ireland thanks to the work of the E-work Action Council which I was also a member of back in 2000. You don't have to have planning permission for a home office (in general). There is no rates issue. Your company can reimburse you reasonable telephone costs etc.

So no supply problems but a serious demand problem which I would say is partly structural rooted in the Irish employment market and partly cultural due to management attitudes.

Best wishes

Imogen