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Home office

B. S. Raghavan

SOHOS (small office home offices) are coming into their own in the US in a big way. With nearly 60 per cent of the households having PCs and Internet connection, it is now possible, with the help of intranet, local area networks, wireless applicati on protocols and handhelds to transact business sitting at home, while driving or flying and on visits away from one's office. At a rapid pace in the US, and more slowly in other advanced countries, the concept of flexitime and telecommuting is gai ning ground. The number of telecommuters in the US has risen from four million in 1990 to 23.6 million (or roughly one out of six workers) in 2000.

Flexitime allows an employee to choose his own working hours, so long as he conforms to the officially prescribed total number of hours per day or per week and he completes the tasks assigned to him within schedule and in the manner desired. Telecommutin g dispenses with the obligation of attendance at workplaces altogether, with the same expectation of the employee discharging his duties in time by putting in the needed effort.

Both fulfil a very important public purpose as well. They take away much of the load on the transport system, relieving the congestion and the attendant psychological stress and strain which explode in the form of road rage fatalities. The employee union s in general are bound to welcome the idea, as it will help relieve the tedium and hassles of the present system and increase productivity and loyalty.

Both, however, require a measure of trust on the part of employers and a sense of accountability on the part of employees. Old style managers are apt to feel acutely uncomfortable not having the employees they supervise under their thumb, so to speak, fe aring that any kind of relaxation of working conditions as they have been for centuries will lead to slackness and inefficiency. These reservations may have some substance in them, frailties of human nature being what they are. There is also the consider ation that the employer may have to make the necessary investment to provide the facilities of a soho where the employee cannot afford the cost of setting it up.

While corporates in the US have been quick to capitalise on the advantages of flexitime and telecommuting, government offices have been tardy. This is not to be wondered at for two reasons: First, their natural tendency to resist change, especially when it involves implementing new ideas; and second, the working relationships there being founded more on distrust than otherwise.

Taking the rough with the smooth, flexitime and telecommuting deserve to be introduced in all organisations on as extensive a scale as possible. It is commendable from this standpoint that a far-sighted member of the powerful Appropriations Committee of US House of Representatives, Mr Frank R. Wolf, has written into the 2001 budgetary appropriation bill a provision requiring every federal agency to give at least 25 per cent of its eligible workers the option of working outside the office before October, and calling upon the Office of Personnel Management to submit periodical reports on the result of enforcement of the provision . He estimates that even allowing for the contingency of exempting certain departments, such as Justice, Treasury, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, CIA and FBI because of the secret and sensitive nature of their work, nearly half of the 1.8 million employees can be brought within the purview of his proviso.

It is time steps were taken along these lines in India too.