Britain's highly educated, motivated workforce

[DodgyAgent]

Where did I mention working from home?

It must be in there somewhere

[Sysman]

It must be in there somewhere

I assure you it wasn't (except for the time when you aren't charging the client of course).

[Francko]

If you can work from home then the work can be outsourced abroad.

This is the type of backward mentality that keeps productivity still low in modern offices. Perhaps if you mean 100% at home that might be true but what's wrong with 40-60-80% of your time working from home? Do many people really need 100% of their time to be in the office? Would you increase your business if you were 100% of your time in the clients' office? There is a certain number of tasks which can be easily and indeed more productively done at home. There are though many no-life people whose highest form of social life is company meetings.

Besides there are plenty of communication tools nowadays which make remote work much easier.

Any job in principle can be outsourced. Do you think yours cannot be? I'd be happy to go to work for Madras Recruitment Consultancy which only take 3% rate cut.

[Sysman]

If you can work from home then the work can be outsourced abroad.

Not necessarily. Certainly not if you are working with stuff that is not allowed to go out of the country, Managing a bunch of installation electricians and hardware engineers over the phone doesn't really work either,

This is the type of backward mentality that keeps productivity still low in modern offices. Perhaps if you mean 100% at home that might be true but what's wrong with 40-60-80% of your time working from home? Do many people really need 100% of their time to be in the office? <snip>

Having tried it, I don't actually want to work 100% from home, as I feel that regular face to face contact is important. But when it comes to liaising with your counterparts in both the US and Australia, home can be the best place to do it. You really can post a problem late at night, go to bed and find the answer waiting for you when you wake up. This works both ways, as I can be solving problems for the US & Oz lot when they are in bed.

It's a more flexible way of working and at the moment we need to look for any competitive advantage we can find. I'm not saying it's a cure-all for everyone, but for certain cases, the idea shouldn't be written off without thinking.