The survey of 1,000 UK workers reveals that only 36.5 per cent currently work from home for some of the time, despite 90 per cent saying they could work effectively from any location outside of the office if they had the right technology.

Moreover, the research found that 85 per cent say that flexibility in work location and hours is important to them.

83 per cent say it’s not necessary to be in an office to be productive and in fact 69 per cent believed that they had better technology at home than they do at work.

Via bmmagazine.co.uk >

The first trend is how the shared office and the network have replaced the solo entrepreneur in her garage as the incubators for new companies and ideas. “Coworking” didn’t exist a decade ago, and today there are nearly a million people globally working alongside peers who aren’t necessarily their colleagues. Workers in these spaces consistently report making more connections, learning skills faster, and feeling more inspired and in control than their cubicle-dwelling counterparts inside large companies. They also have different expectations from cloud workers content to commute from their couch.

“They want connectivity, they want density, and they want fluidity — the ability to move quickly from role to role,” says Jonathan Ortmans, president of the Global Entrepreneurship Network and a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. “I think all three things lend themselves especially well to shared work environments.”

The second, more powerful trend is the steadily climbing number of freelance, independent, contingent, and temporary workers — more than 53 million Americans at last count, including 2.8 million freelance business owners. Survey research by the economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger suggests that nearly all of the 10 million jobs created between 2005 and 2015 fall under this heading, attesting to the rise of the “gig economy.” This structural change is exhilarating if you’re armed with a laptop, Obamacare, and a high hourly rate; not so much if your family needs a steady paycheck.

Via backchannel.stfi.re

In the Bay Area and beyond, organizations continue to transform their workplaces, and debates continue about the benefits of open floor plans and virtual offices. Globally, a new generation of workers, enabled by technology tools, is fueling the trend of employees setting up shop at home or at other remote locations.

Is working at home right for your workplace? That depends on many variables, including location, commute alternatives, workforce demographics, and job functions. While every workplace is unique and every culture is unique, it may be helpful to look at some of the data. In this article, Robin Weckesser, president of a3 Workplace Strategies, explores the pros and cons.

Via workdesign.com > [paywall]

Working from home has long been branded ‘shirking from home’ but a new survey suggests that home workers actually take fewer sick days. The research by CartridgePeople.com and published in the SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) Workers Report, found that home workers are not only happier but they are also healthier than their workplace-based counterparts – taking an average of 2.4 sick days per year, in comparison to the 2.6 taken by those working from company premises. Of course, that doesn’t tell us if they are in fact healthier, or that they’re more prepared to carry out their work duties from the comfort of their bed. But the survey of 1,096 British workers, including both home workers and those who work from their employers’ premises, also revealed that the majority of workers (60 percent) did feel happier when working from home.

Via workplaceinsight.net >

It’s always good to see academic research supporting ideas that would appear pretty obvious but go against a widely accepted narrative. So we should all welcome the results of a new study from researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which found that the perceived benefits of working from home disappear over time for both employees and organisations when homeworking is a full-time arrangement. The report concludes that while previous studies have demonstrated how home workers are more productive than office-based workers, the LSE study of more than 500 employees shows that on a long term basis, there are no differences between home and office workers. The reason, according to Dr Esther Canonico from LSE’s Department of Management, the lead author of the report, is that employees no longer see home working as a discretionary benefit or a privilege when it becomes the norm in an organisation.

Read the article on workplaceinsight.net >

Thanks to 24/7 connectivity, the boundaries between work and life are eroding, several studies have found. A survey from EY, a global assurance, tax, and advisory services organization, found that 64% of U.S. workers report they’re working two to four hours more a week, and one-third (36%) are on the job an extra five hours or more. No wonder satisfaction with work-life balance is sliding downward as well. Glassdoor’s most recent survey of employee feedback from about 60,000 company reviews revealed a drop in ratings from 3.5 (out of a possible 5) in 2009 to 3.2 this year.

Read the article on fastcompany.com >