Times Online has produced ‘The 10 best ways to cut petrol costs’ in a bid to help drivers make their fuel go further which includes tips such as; pumping up your tyres, turning off the air-conditioning, driving smoothly and changing oil regularly.

Although there is no doubt that these tips can make some difference (and actually I adhere to many of them myself already) there is no substitute to reducing fuel expenditure by being in a position to drive less!

Not only are drivers being taxed more in a poor economic climate, London commuters are going to see a rise in the congestion charge to £10 and those taking the TUBE, train or bus will also experience rises in fares (as bus fares are to go up by 12.7% and TUBE fares by 3.9%).

As we are all aware, unemployment rates are at their highest for years and as a result people who are in employment are working twice as hard to keep their jobs and are gritting their teeth against the cost and inconvenience of long commutes until such time that they can choose where they want to work.

My head therefore turns to the employers – how do they keep their employees, who have remained loyal through the recession, once the recovery brings more employment options to the suitably qualified?

Homeworking is the key to employee retention

Incorporating home or remote working practices for roles which are able to be performed outside the office environment has a multitude of benefits, so I have whittled down my top ten:

1. Home working tackles the rising costs of commuting for employees making them less resentful and more keen to stay with your organisation
2. It also tackles the extra costs associated with working in an office e.g. work clothes, make up, shoes etc.
3. It introduces a better work/life balance by reducing commuting times and leads to happier, more productive employees
4. Home working will increase employee loyalty once the recovery and employment choice increases
5. It saves organisations costs in terms of heating, lighting and equipment as well as less need for office space
6. For employees there is no need to buy expensive lunches or feel you have to go out for lunch with colleagues for birthday’s etc.
7. Co-workers can only judge you on what you get done rather than when you arrive at or leave the office
8. Employees don’t need to take time off work to be able to let the gas man or repair man in
9. When people decide to bring their flu and bugs into the office you can avoid getting sick
10. It’s been shown that people who work from home take fewer sick days

If you are a home worker and have experienced these or any other benefits I’d be interested to hear your point of view…or indeed you think that home working simply isn’t an option for you because your organisational culture would not embrace it.

It seems to me that this is just another way of squeezing more money from companies in the name of climate change. However if the scheme does take off then it strengthens the argument for allowing widespread remote working for jobs which can be performed anywhere, in my opinion. Having fewer cars on the road can only lead to less congestion, less pollution, less noise and less need for disruptive roadworks, so I am all in favour for schemes which encourage a flexible approach to how we work and how organisations operate.

Backed up by research from the BCI (Business continuity Institute) confirming that over half of organisations they surveyed had weak or no pandemic contingency plans, the CIPD warns that senior managers will ignore the second wave threat of increased swine flu cases and will be hit by substantial staff absences, a great threat to businesses and the recovery of the recession.

Warning companies to not underestimate the potential threat posed by a second wave of swine flu does not seem to be making any difference. There are many factors that contribute to a sense of apathy, but the key obstacle is overcoming the feeling that it will never be as bad as the media would have us believe. As humans we tend to be naturally optimistic, playing down any negative possibility. Indeed I fell victim of this myself recently in a car park…as I went to the machine to put in my card to pay my money the man before me told me it wasn’t working and that it had swallowed his money. Being in a rush and ever the optimist, I thought that maybe it would work for me. You can guess what happened!

So the lesson to be learnt from the information given to us, is that organisations should be factoring ‘optimism bias’ into their contingency plans and planning for the worst case scenario. This is much less work and effort than some managers tend to think, as you can simply and seamlessly re-route incoming calls to employee homes and allow secure access to corporate networks. After all not all staff absences will be due to illness, so why not make better use of their time away and give them the tools to continue working?

Remote working should not be seen as a ‘fad’ but as the 21st century way of doing business, for those jobs which are able to be conducted wherever a broadband or wifi connection is available. There seems to be an assumption that there are only two ways of working, office based or home based. I beg to differ, flexible working should be the norm, allowing employees and employers alike the choice on a day by day basis where work should be performed, be it 2 days in the office and 3 at home, or 1 day at a remote, satellite office and the rest of the week elsewhere.

Making it easy, and accesible for business to get done in a time and cost effective manner is the key here, not simply just a way of saving a few pounds in the short term!

In light of this information I believe that for UK businesses and organisations, more emphasis should be placed on managing the impact of a flu pandemic, than is placed on disaster recovery for terrorist attacks, certainly at the present time. That is not to say that other disruptive events should be dis-regarded, but that the top priority for now, the winter, and possibly further into next year, is to protect our employees and build in business continuity into all systems and processes to ensure the smooth running of public and private sector services.

Of course the upside for having a robust business continuity plan in place for the swine flu pandemic is that employees are, by default, also prepared for more major disruptive events which, though shocking for an organisation, should take away the uncertainty of what unaffected employees should be doing in the aftermarth of a terrorist attack to their business district, or office building. By ensuring that call re-routing from office phones to alternative mobile or landline numbers becomes a buisness-as-usual activity, the ability for employees to adapt to changing work circumstances is greatly increased, resulting in the time between a disruption and getting an organisation back to normal, to be greatly decreased.

Author: Karen Jones

The leading authorities have been proven right in stating that the only certaintly about swine flu is uncertainty. One week the press reports that the symptoms are mild and there really is nothing to worry about, another week there are cases of seamingly healthy individuals being killed. Who knows how it would affect you or I?

I also found out today that swine flu is now present in the immediate area within which I live, as reported by my daughter’s nursery. This information, coupled with what we are hearing today has started getting me really worried. My immediate reaction is one of wanting to keep my family close to me and away from potential infection.

It really is time that we started closing ranks and finding ways of working flexibly to stop this flu pandemic being the killer that it has the potential to be. There is no reason why this pandemic could not be as lethal as that of 1918, if the virus mutates faster than a vaccine can be made. We have to protect ourselves as well as our colleagues and businesses. Working from home or an isolated location appears to me to be the best solution all round, and I for one will be doing so to protect my family, as I did last Christmas to spare family and friends from the seasonal flu we all suffered.