Feature

The Teletronic Cottage

More New Zealanders are taking advantage of telecommunications technology to work from home.

By Vicki Hyde, NZSM

It sounds like a vision of the future -- a computer software engineer uses fax and phone to support his Japanese client's products in the US from New Zealand.

This is just eample of the growing number of teleworkers in the country. They use telecommunications technology to undertake work from a location separate from their employers or clients.

Telework can be as basic as travelling sales staff keeping in touch with an office using cellular phones and pages. It can be as complex as international computer communications involving a number of companies shifting information and work across national and time boundaries.

New Zealand has one of the world's highest penetrations of faxes and cellular phones. That, combined with an increasing number of specialised telecommunications services and affordable personal computers, has helped the local teleworking market to grow.

DSIR Social Science has been studying telework and its potential, and is confident that it could play a significant part in this country's future.

Productivity, Flexibility

"We can see from many overseas studies that telework can improve productivity and the flexibility of work organisation and production," says Penelope Schoeffel, a DSIR social scientist involved in the project.

In many cases, teleworking is specifically chosen in order to take advantage of the lifestyle opportunities it makes available. These include being able to live in a desired rural area, maintaining a flexible work calendar or being more involved with child rearing.

Most teleworkers take advantage of being able to structure their own work hours. The DSIR found very few in their study who worked formal office hours, with most working late at night or on weekends when necessary or desired.

Teleworking also offers opportunities for disabled workers to utilise their skills without the problems associated with having to work in an office environment.

Electronic Outwork

Not all teleworking experiences are positive. Overseas, teleworking has been compared to electronic outwork. Large corporations have employed women to do data entry, paying on a keystroke basis. This has given the work a generally poor image, particularly amongst the much-used clerical work force.

Terri Burling of the New Zealand Clerical Workers Union is concerned at the possibilities of exploiting teleworkers. She hopes to see the development of a code of practice to prevent exploitation of teleworkers and to answer potential problems.

"One would hope that the opportunity to introduce teleworking is not solely about reducing overheads and labour costs," she says. "For potential workers, it must be seen as an opportunity worth grasping -- not the creation of a ghettoised labour force with significantly reduced wages, opportunities and, ultimately, living standards."

The DSIR notes that New Zealand clerical workers are not as vulnerable as those overseas, as the small-scale nature of their employment here reduces the advantages of farming out data entry jobs to home-based employees.

Of the teleworkers surveyed by the DSIR, over 80% were self-employed, generally in a professional capacity. Most had taken on telework as a means of enhancing their lifestyle and providing a flexible working arrangement. Just over two-thirds had tertiary level education, and they generally earned well above a standard wage.

Isolation is one of the main disadvantages cited by teleworkers. Working from home means less chance for the social interaction that forms part of an office structure. A number of common teleworking occupations, such as journalism, real estate work and consulting, sidestep this by requiring interaction with clients.

One communication consultant, Bevis England, has initiated a newsletter, The Home Office, to provide information and contacts for people working from home. The newsletter discusses the problems of starting and running a home-based office, with tips on everything from telecommunications strategies to how to manage friends and families.

Corporate Telework

While most teleworkers in the DSIR study were home-based self-employed professionals, several large New Zealand companies are using teleworking to improve efficiency and working conditions.

Mobil Oil uses a combination of cellular phones and computer communications facilities to improve their workforce structure. Originally, a large number of small branch offices served a moving workforce of isolated sales people. Communications by phone or post were proving inadequate.

In 1989, the company introduced telework techniques, and now has about 65 people, predominantly sales staff, operating as teleworkers. They use voice mail services and links to the company's mainframe computer to place orders, request maintenance visits, check credit ratings and answer customer queries.

Mobil's Paul Rea sees few problems in having unsupervised teleworkers.

"People are measured on their output and results, so someone abusing the implicit trust required for teleworking would be evident from results," he says.

Mobil has learned a great deal from the experience of the last few years. Rea recalls that too many new communication channels were introduced at once, creating a period of confusion. The company did gain from this, however, being able to sort out the most appropriate solutions through this "shotgun" approach. Rea has also realised the need for on-going training, particularly in the computer and telecommunications field.

Bluebird Foods, too, has found teleworking to be an efficient method of organising sales staff. Customer details, pricing and inventory information are sent down the phone lines to 35 van drivers serving 5,000 customers weekly. Each evening the orders and invoices are sent to the main supply centre in Auckland for processing. Teleworking has improved communications and reduced the paperwork for the drivers. It has also given Bluebird a more accurate understanding of customer demands.

Neighbourhood Centres

For those not ready or able to embrace the home office, there is the neighbourhood telework centre. These centres provide communications equipment and services useful for teleworkers. They may be "closed" centres, operated by a company as a satellite office, or "open" centres being used by a number of people to work for different clients or employers.

Such centres have three main purposes -- the reduction of commuter stress, the creation of jobs, and the reinvigoration of depressed rural areas.

DSIR social scientists see commuter reduction being of potential benefit in cities such as Auckland and Wellington, where transportation services and routes are already stressed. Satellite telework offices in suburban areas or nearby cities could provide a means of alleviating this.

Schoeffel and her colleagues are working with the Spreydon-Heathcote Community Board, in Christchurch, to develop a telework centre to serve small businesses in the board's region. The board sees major opportunities to attract small businesses and employment opportunities to the area. They are currently surveying local businesses, particularly those with fewer than five employees, to gauge their response to the concept.

DSIR social scientist Alison Loveridge sees the centre as providing access to equipment without the need for heavy capital investment -- a commonly cited problem with establishing telework opportunities.

"It would also facilitate sharing of both problems and innovations by business people," she says, suggesting that centres could also act as an information resource.

The DSIR team is keen to set up a similar operation in a provincial town, such as Nelson, to assess the best method of encouraging telework opportunities in more remote areas.

The Future At Work?

In the DSIR study, 90% of the teleworkers surveyed were involved in information exchange or information technology. A number were already selling their skills internationally, in some cases taking advantage of New Zealand's location to offer competitive services. In one example, information was being sent from Japan to the UK for translation during the UK day, transmitted from there to New Zealand for editing, and ready on the Tokyo client's desk the following morning Japan-time.

"They work there and live here because New Zealand is an outstandingly desireable place in which to live in terms of climate, scenery, national institutions and future prospects," Schoeffel avers. "Our high quality telecommunications infrastructure should increase the number of people with advanced information skills serving an international, as well as a domestic market."

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.