Guest blog: Why 2017 is the year to let more people work from home - By Frances O'Grady, TUC General Secretary

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Guest blog: Why 2017 is the year to let more people work from home - By Frances O'Grady, TUC General Secretary

Homeworking up by 7.7% this year, but millions more still want it.

More and more employees are working from home. This is welcome, but I am worried that progress is still much too slow. National Work from Home Day, which is organised by Work Wise UK, is an excellent opportunity to look at how we give our increasingly tech-savvy employees more choice about where they do their work. Therefore I urge employers to consider how homeworking might help both their workers and their business. 

During 2016 the number of employees regularly working from home increased by 118,000, taking the total to 1,639,000. The increase of 7.7% out-stripped the growth in employee jobs by a factor of 12 last year. This news is worth celebrating, but there are still millions more employees who would like to be able to work from home.

Homeworking must be well-thought out and fairly managed

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Guest blog: The learning curve - By Joanna Boyce, Founder of Jobot Social→

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Guest blog: The learning curve - By Joanna Boyce, Founder of Jobot Social

https://jobotsocial.wordpress.com/Making the decision to not only change career, but to try out working for yourself can be both daunting and exciting in equal measure. Whether you choose (or indeed have the choice) to stay at home to raise your children, work part-time or are a full-time working mum,  rest assured that you're doing what is best for your family. Feelings of guilt plague our choices but we have to all cut ourselves and each other some slack. There's no 'right' way, we choose the way that best suits our personal situation. The preferred choice isn't always there and the chance to have a good work-life balance can be difficult.

I made a decision right from the start. I wanted to dedicate time to my family and to be readily available for the school run, unexpected illness and school holidays. To do this I needed to find, or create, flexible work.

I'd been in the same industry since leaving university, and knew when I went on maternity leave that I wanted a fresh start and a change. I did some online training courses, borrowed books, sought advice and was lucky to have the full support of an understanding and encouraging partner.

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Guest blog: Work Wise Week can inspire new business owners - By Steve Byrne, Chief Executive of Travel Counsellors.→

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Guest blog: Work Wise Week can inspire new business owners - By Steve Byrne, Chief Executive of Travel Counsellors.

Work Wise Week does an incredibly valuable job. With flexible working on the rise, businesses and individuals alike need to be aware of the enormous potential that adopting modern working practices can offer. In particular, it sheds light on a growing trend which has already had an impact not just on our business, but across the travel sector as a whole.

A recent report stated that the number of people working from home in the UK hit a record 1.5 million last year, up by 20 per cent since 2006. I suspect that is under stated given the number of people who also work from home on an ad hoc basis, but simply goes to show the scale of the labour market currently either running their own business, or flexing the traditional definition of employment.

We have seen that this model of home working applies itself particularly well to the travel sector. Even working from a bricks and mortar environment, many agents try to make themselves available for customers beyond the traditional hours of a retail shop or even that of a call centre. For us, working from home has been the foundation for many of our franchisees’ customer relationships and enables them to provide a better level of customer service and care.

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Guest blog: I was fed up with having to pay extra to travel to work, just because I work part time - By Jo Rossi, Founder of the Get Us to Work Campaign.

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Guest blog: I was fed up with having to pay extra to travel to work, just because I work part time - By Jo Rossi, Founder of the Get Us to Work Campaign.

 I moved back to Kent after 20 years in London, to get a decent step on the housing ladder. Considering my options as I returned to work post baby, I was struck by the lack of flexible season tickets. Commuting from Ashford, and forced on to the high speed train due to unfavourable timetabling, I was faced with two choices. I could buy peak time returns, which cost around 50 per cent extra for each journey, or I could shell out over £6000 for an annual season ticket which I would only use three times a week.

I was lucky enough that my employer and I came to an agreement where I mainly work from home to get around the ridiculous costs of commuting part-time. I very much appreciated no longer having to pay such high travel costs, but I missed seeing my colleagues and being a part of office life.

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Guest blog: How I beat procrastination in one day - By Andrew Boswell, who is a Programme Director with more than 40 years experience in IT and Telecoms.→

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Guest blog: How I beat procrastination in one day - By Andrew Boswell, who is a Programme Director with more than 40 years experience in IT and Telecoms.

Today I’m going to show you how I finally beat procrastination. I stopped putting off those important tasks, the ones I delayed even when I knew bad things would happen if I didn’t do them. Before, I shied away from the most important tasks. To be honest, I was a bit of a ditherer.

How did I do it? The Staircase Technique. And in this case study I’m going to show exactly how I did it, step by step.

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

How the Staircase Technique Kick-Started My Career

I was a programme manager in an international company. One of their key software developments was in deep trouble. All the releases were hopelessly late, and reliability was appalling. Things came to a head, and I was asked to take over.

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