It is said that most jobs that are done in an office, do not require special machinery, equipment or a team working together, can be adapted to be carried out at home.
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The Tynedale Network Ltd have been managing teleworked projects in the UK for five years now, and this is the information pack they hand out to telework recruits. Kevin Curran of TNL kindly gave us permission to reproduce it here: he can be contacted at kevin@tecsoft.com or on +44 1914 200280.
Guidelines On Working From Home For Remote Workers
It is said that most jobs that are done in an office, do not require special machinery, equipment or a team working together, can be adapted to be carried out at home.
But when taking up work from home, a firm grip on the realities of what is involved is essential. Work from home is still the same work that you may be doing in an office for example, but with no immediate access to co-workers: colleagues, bosses and subordinates. It needs to be planned carefully and carried out with minimum distractions caused by others and by yourself.
Many questions have to be considered before this choice of work practice is taken up: do you think remote work practices suit you? Does isolation matter to you very much? How do you feel in the role of a remote worker? Are you motivated enough to work from home ? How can you sustain this motivation? What methods can you use to cope with problems?
Working from home may be a conscious decision a person makes or it may be temporarily imposed on an individual due to particular circumstances.
People may choose to work from home, because they feel the need to change their working life; they may find working in a traditional setting too distracting, they spend a lot of time commuting, they feel uncomfortable working with particular colleagues, they may become physically disabled, yet still capable of doing their job.
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Temporary change in circumstances may be: care for others, temporary disability, relocation or unemployment. These should not affect the quality of work carried out , even though it happens at home.
Many people find they are more productive working at home, focused and free from interruptions, in a less structured setting which they find more appealing and less threatening. They make decisions about their working habits - hours worked or the amount of work undertaken.
Remember to consider individual home circumstances and the attitudes of the family as they greatly affect the work itself.
Before deciding to start working from home, it is important to give some thought to the following points:
Work Space
The issue has to be considered very carefully.
Equipment
The type of work you decide to do from home will determine the amount and nature of the equipment and materials needed.
Check if you have all the equipment you need. Find out who to go to if you don't.
Do you have a:
Would you need them all?
Do you have enough stationary or other materials necessary for work? If you experience shortages, do you know where to go or who to ask?
Are you expected to provide all of these/some yourself? Is this clear in your contract? If you are not sure, clarify with the employer.
Here is a checklist - a 'shopping list' of equipment and materials. Some will be essential, some more of luxury items for self-employed remote workers:
If you are providing all yourself, look out for bargains, rent some equipment, use a community business centre or telecottage, if possible.
Prioritise - which items are essential for your work and which are not?
Work Regime
It is essential for remote workers to have an established, yet flexible, work regime. A working day is still a working day, even if the work is done in your home. One of the undeniable benefits of working from home is the individual's choice of how to approach it. Some people may prefer to dress for work, or even take a short walk around the block before they start work ('going to work') to separate their work life from their home life. Others may prefer a more casual attitude. There are no rules or dress code to follow.
It is also very important to establish your most productive hours and see which distractions (and when in your working day) are genuine and which you invent yourself...
Every remote worker must find ways of avoiding distractions and coping with the inevitable ones. If you get up from your desk embarrassingly often, cannot concentrate on the work at hand, do not meet the deadlines, it may be a sign that remote work without close supervision is not really for you - and not that you just lack inspiration on a particular day.
There is also the added problem of the common assumption that because you are at home, you are not really working and therefore can do the washing, walk the neighbours' dog, pick up the dry cleaning or the kids from school, etc. Before starting work from home, your family, friends, neighbours must be made aware that your home is also your place of work.
Also, if you think that you can combine working from home and caring for small children or the elderly in your family at the same time, you are mistaken. One side will always loose out, leaving you feeling frustrated and guilty. Of course there are ways of combining both, but proper arrangements have to be made. It may mean reduced working hours or working different hours, but it can be done. Keeping a work log/work diary, at least for the first month or two, will help you to analyse your self-management and time skills. They may also help your employer in finding out what kind of work suits you best.
Coping With Isolation
Before work starts you should clarify, point by point, all the details of what is requested from you, by when, how, how often you are to report progress and/or queries. Working from home does not provide the easy access to your boss/colleagues to clarify points, which your office-based counterparts have. It requires discipline and habit to produce results to a standard that is required of you.
Working at home inevitably causes feelings of isolation - both professional and social. Professional isolation carries with it the danger of missing out in new developments in your profession, new ways of doing things and opportunities of career development.
Social isolation is different and may be sometimes more difficult to overcome. Some people cope better than others. You must develop ways of overcoming it by organising your working day in such a way as to allow yourself time to get out.
Regular meetings to check progress of the project at hand should also be treated as a social opportunity, if time and space permit.
Participation in training, workshops, conferences, membership of discussion groups/newsletter subscription via computer help a great deal, too.
Supervision, Reporting And Communication
Working from home lacks the closer supervision experienced inn the traditional office setting. There are mechanisms that replace this close supervision. Frequent communication with your project manager is one of them.
It must be agreed before work starts:
Progress should be reported daily. Both sides can then check whether what is being done is what has been requested, whether it is going smoothly, whether you are meeting the required standard, agreed deadlines and whether you are encountering any problems.
Communication must be precise and accurate.
Tt can happen:
Face-to-face is probably most desirable but least convenient and easy for daily contact.
Over the telephone is the method most frequently used.
By post is the slowest method.
By fax/modem is probably the most convenient method of communication. It does not rely on the physical presence of both parties in the same place or time, it does not require the recipient's immediate attention. Yet messages can be answered almost immediately - helping, solving problems, answering questions.
The frequency of communication may determine the means of it. At one extreme, for some jobs daily reporting via the telephone, fax or modem may be essential, at the other - a completed assignment/chunk of a project delivered by the remote worker will suffice.
For reasons of isolation, frequent meetings with the employer and other members of the project team are very beneficial. Not only progress and possible problems are then discussed, but they are an opportunity for training and development guidance.
With just a little bit of care you can dramatically reduce your
telephone and CIS costs. The trick is to use the WinCim programme
as an "off-line reader" by making full use of the Inbasket,
Outbasket and Filing cabinet facilities .. here's how :-
Prepare all your mail and
forum messages and store them in your Outbasket before
connecting to CompuServe.
Connect to CompuServe and
Retrieve Mail, delete any obvious "junk" mail without
reading it, then put the rest straight into your Inbasket, again,
do not read it yet !, Now send all the mail from your Outbasket
and (see below)
When visiting forums Mark
and Retrieve selected sections in a forum then read through the
threads after you have disconnected (see below)
From the Mail "pull down menu" select the option Retrieve Mail
Watch whilst WinCim connects and gets your mail and lists the titles
Highlight and delete any obvious Junk mail that you do not want
Select the Get All button and watch whilst WinCim pops your mail into your Inbasket
Now click on the Outbasket icon and select the Send All button.
Check that WinCim disconnects you !
Now you can visit your favourite forums, for each forum do the following :-
If there are Waiting messages check briefly to see if any are urgent, do not reply at this stage.
From the Messages menu select the Browse option
Check mark against any message section that you use
From the Message menu again select Retrieve Marked
WinCim will show you the sections chosen in a downloading window
Make sure the Disconnect button is marked and click on Get All ( see below)
Watch whilst your selected threads are copied into your filing
cabinet
Check that WinCim disconnects you.
Your messages are now safely stored in your filing cabinet and
you can browse them at leisure.
Red Dog Internet initiative; billing in local currencies; personal email aliases
Lots happening on CompuServe this month. If you're a CompuServe subscriber, you should have received a lengthy message from your product manager. If not, here's a brief summary:
Red Dog" is the code name for the recently announced initiative to develop all current and future content on CompuServe using Internet technology and to move all existing content over to Internet within 1 year.
As part of "Red Dog", CompuServe has also recently announced a strategic technology partnership with Microsoft, whereby CompuServe will deploy Microsoft's new platform for Internet services code-named "Normandy" which CompuServe believes will provide the best possible platform to deliver the best of the Internet.
One consequence of this new found commitment to the Internet, is that non-US subscribers to CompuServe will continue to be billed in US Dollars and this will be converted into local currencies as is currently the case.
E-mail aliases stalled - again
E-mail aliases will not now be available to CompuServe subscribers until its new Internet-based technology is fully in place, which will take approximately 12 months. Anyone who has successfully registered their name, that is, smith_john perhaps instead of 1000,1111, will keep their unique id for when the system is converted from numeric to alpha.
Personal Naming Recommendation
And on naming standards for electronic messaging, the World Electronic Messaging Associations - there are five covering, North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and Oceana, approved last week (June 12) a Vision Statement and a Personal Naming Recommendation for email addresses.
The members of WEMA plan to enhance their Vision Statement, adding the following sentence in its summary: "The WEMA -- the Global Forum for Advanced Communications, will drive the evolution of electronic communications to enable people, businesses, and governments to achieve their fullest potential."
WEMA has issued a press release announcing the unanimous approval of a Personal Naming Recommendation, which suggests a framework for the format of email user names on the Internet and X.400 networks. It follows a simple format under which users will be known by a combination of their first name, last name, company name, and country code, as in:
Henk Tobias of Unilever (The Netherlands), one of the prime movers behind the proposal and chairman of the European EMA User Committee, said the standard is flexible enough to accommodate cultural differences and regional variations in naming conventions. For instance, some people call the last name the surname or the family name, and others call the first name the given name. Surname and given name are mandatory, he said, but initials should be used only when necessary to establish uniqueness within a given domain. In addition, people with multipart names should use hyphens between the words instead of spaces, as in Billy-Bob or Anna-Maria or van-Dyck, and a period should be used only between the given name and the surname. Nicknames and aliases are of course allowed in place of given name, but the surname should always be present.
Tobias suggests a very simple solution to the task of deciding which is the surname, and therefore which of the names is the one under which the entry should be listed in a directory. He told a TWEURO reporter: "The test should be based on the local customs: where would that person's name be listed in their city's telephone directory?" So in his homeland of Holland, Tobias said that a Mr. Hans van der Graf would be alphabetically listed in the phone book under "G" and his user name therefore would be hans-van-der.graf@company.nl on the Internet. But in England, such a person would be listed under "V" and his user name would be hans.van-der-graf@company.uk on the Internet. In Belgium, such a name might be listed in the phone book as Vandergraf, and therefore his user name would be hans.vandergraf@company.be on the Internet.
"The biggest obstacle," Tobias said, "is that email user names on the Internet can contain only seven-bit ASCII characters, which will force some people in places such as Scandinavia, France and Germany to replace the accented vowels in their names with one of the five used in English: a, e, i, o, or u." But this is a restriction imposed by the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, not the Personal Naming Recommendation, and this has been a fact of life on the Internet long before Tobias formulated his proposal. "In aviation and air traffic control, it was agreed world-wide some time ago that everything will be done in English. The same thing with messaging. If you want your message to arrive, and have it understood by the local system, that's the way to do it."
An even bigger obstacle was settled during the WEMA meeting regarding the name of the proposal. Tobias had originally called it a "standard" when it was formally proposed six weeks ago during the EMA '96 show in California, but some members of the American EMA objected to the term. So a compromise term was selected: "recommendation".
Tobias disagreed that the word standard would imply mandatory usage, but in the end he also agreed to the compromise. "I think the name standard is, I would say, more aggressive [than recommendation]," he told TWEURO. "But it still doesn't mean, in my opinion, that you have to use it, and if you don't, you will be penalised. Obviously, the EMA in the U.S. has a different definition of the word standard. But I think in the end, a strong recommendation is the same as a standard."
The Personal Naming Recommendation will now be formally proposed to the Internet Engineering Task Force, the standards-makers of the Internet community, though probably not during the group's next meeting later this month in Montreal. Tobias said that he hopes the IETF will eventually adopt the proposal as a "Best Practise" recommendation, giving it additional weight as a world-wide standard format for personal email addresses.
Further information:
EEMA.
Tel: +44 1386 793 028
Fax: +44 1386 793 268
Internet: eemaoffice@attmail.com
Europe's record in user communications
During an open Electronic Messaging Users Panel discussion session last week in Brussels, Mick Reid (Managing Director, SYSTEC, Belgium) presented some of his views on electronic communications in Europe. Here are some of the highlights from his paper:
"Communications have been important to Europe for at least two thousand years and Europe is what it is today because of BAD communications. I will prove that both of these statements are true.
"Business success today depends more than ever on partnerships - partnerships with colleagues, employees, shareholders, customers and suppliers. Partnerships cannot work without good communications.
"Internal communications must operate effectively for an organisation to function as a team. External communication with customers and suppliers is equally important. Without customers there is no revenue and therefore no business. Finding, serving and keeping customers is what enterprise is about.
"Long term, mutually beneficial supplier partnerships, built on honest and regular communication, enable the development of improved strategic focus and greater concentration on the customer. Two thousand years ago the Roman Empire relied upon good communications. They were the first Europeans to recognise that Trans-European Networks are essential for both trade and defence. They constructed high quality roads that have withstood the ravages of time. Many of the roads that exist in Europe today are built on top of the roads the Romans built so long ago.
"Unfortunately the European Unity created by the Romans was lost through a lack of strategic focus and long term planning. Europe was thrown into the Dark Ages and it is only in the last thirty years that we are starting to experience again the benefits of a unified Europe.
"A unified Europe was almost forced on us at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This attempt failed about twenty kilometres south of where we are today near a small village called Plancenoit. In 1815, Napoleon had come back from exile and was advancing his armies towards Brussels. Noticing that the Prussian army was apparently retreating towards the east Napoleon sent a third of his army, under the leadership of Grouchy, to follow the Prussians and make sure that they did not regroup.
"The next day a fierce battle ensued, where Wellington, in charge of the Allied armies, realised that he was about to come unstuck and sent a messenger to find the Prussians and request that they come back and help him out of a sticky situation. Napoleon had also realised that he would have an easier time of it if his other troops were on the battlefield rather than traipsing around Belgium following the Prussians. Grouchy, however, never got the message and never came back to help the Emperor out. The Prussians did arrive and helped Wellington to win the day.
"BAD communications between Napoleon and Grouchy caused Napoleon to lose the battle and Europe is what it is today because of a communication failure. Let's imagine what might have happened if Napoleon had been able to use a mobile phone! Wellington wrote about the battle to his masters from a village called Waterloo and ever since the fight has been known as the battle of Waterloo instead of Plancenoit where the battle actually took place. Another example of bad communications
"From this we can see that communications have been important to Europe for at least two thousand years and that Europe is what it is because of bad communications. Our ability to take advantage of technological advances seems to have no limits. The human being has an amazing ability to think laterally and put unrelated concepts together and come up with a new invention.
"Sometimes this lateral thinking is not balanced out by what we might call 'commonsense'. I am not suggesting that our service suppliers use carrier pigeons but at least now I understand the message 'MTA CONGESTION: UNABLE TO TRANSFER'.
"The serious message I am trying to put over is that we can't model old ways of doing business onto new technologies. We have to rethink how we do business. Electronic messaging, in all its forms, is changing the way that we communicate, changing the way we work and do business with each other. We are still 'feeling our way in the dark' but at least we can now perceive the problems that lie in our path."
Further information:
Michael Reid, SYSTEC.
Tel: +32 2 351 04 90
Fax: +32 2 351 14 50
Internet: mreid@attmail.com
What Europeans think about the Internet and Electronic Commerce
"Electronic Commerce: a snapshot of users' and suppliers' views on key messaging technologies" is a new survey which was published last week in Brussels (June 13).
The research was carried out during March 1996 and based on telephone responses. Briefly, the profile of respondents:
Objective of survey:
The aim of this survey was to understand:
The Internet and fax messaging seem to be the most popular technologies currently in use with 80% of end-user organisations using both technologies. Following hard on the heels of this is LAN-based electronic mail systems such as Lotus cc:Mail and Microsoft Mail (68%). The least popular technology is far and away X.500 - used by only 12% of those surveyed. By comparison, X.400 has been adopted by nearly 48%.
In response to the question: "Which of the technologies do you think will be the most important technology over the next 12 months? We analysed suppliers', consultants' and users' responses as a whole. The answers were polarised around EDI and the Internet with more users believing at least short term that EDI is more important than the Internet. The suppliers tended to lean towards the Internet as being the single most important technology. ISDN also was mentioned as being important within the 12 month timeframe.
Q: Do you think there is a lack of EDI connection between the Value Added Data Services Providers in Europe? Interestingly the views of the users and the consultants were similar. They differ markedly however from the views of the suppliers. Sixty-five per cent of those answering the question believe there is a lack of EDI Connection with 76% of the users responding saying this is an issue. Thirty-five per cent of respondents do not think this is a problem.
Q: Do you think this affects the ease with which you do business electronically? Respondents were divided on this. With roughly half saying this has no effect and the other half saying it has some effect. Very few people think it has a serious effect on how well they can carry out Electronic Commerce.
Q: Which technology do you think will be most important for Electronic Commerce in future? There was broad agreement across all sectors of those surveyed. The message is clear. The Internet is going to be extremely significant in the future. Of those who answered this question 32 said the Internet as compared with 12 rating EDI as important. X.400 and ISDN rank joint third, favoured by 8 respondents.
Q: Do you agree that a new hybrid form of EDI will emerge as a result of the increase in the use of Electronic Commerce (for example, combining Internet, EDI and ISDN technologies?)
Eighty-one per cent of all respondents agreed with this statement. This includes three quarters of end-users and nearly all consultants questioned. We then asked respondents to guess when such a hybrid technology might come into existence. The majority of those interviewed (nearly 30%) believe this will take place within the next 2-3 years.
Q: Is your company using Electronic Commerce for horizontal and vertical integration? It seems that end-users predominantly use Electronic Commerce for internal communications or trading with sister companies (72%). By comparison, suppliers and consultants are more outward facing with most trading links established with customers.
Q: Has your company implemented an internal standard for Electronic Commerce? The majority of those questioned did not know (74%). Of those that answered yes (the remaining 26%) it appears that EDIFACT and TRADANET are the most widely adopted standards.
Q: Do you believe that the Internet and the World Wide Web will eventually replace EDI? Well, neither suppliers (58%) nor end-users (60%) see the Internet completely replacing EDI. However consultants think that it will be a close run thing with 55% agreeing with the statement, 44% disagreeing and the remainder not knowing. Of those that agreed with the statement, the majority see this change happening over the next 5-10 years.
Q: What are the current limitations of the Internet for Electronic Commerce The overwhelming response to this issue remains the security of the Internet. (79% of all respondents). The number one concern for consultants, suppliers and end-users is security issues and the danger of outsiders hacking into systems via the Internet.
In joint second place are the lack of encryption standards and also the lack of common legal and security standards. This is best summed up by one end-user who said: "The single biggest problem is the lack of one set of standards."
In fourth and fifth place, companies are concerned that employees will waste time using the Internet and that there is a lack of quality material published.
Several respondents also mentioned the difficulty of transferring EDI messages to the Internet and the difficulty of sending file attachments.
Q: How is your company currently using the Internet? Nearly half of all respondents who are currently using the Internet are using it primarily to publish sales and marketing information (48%). The next most popular reason is to gather market intelligence (43%). The third most popular use for the Internet is to run bulletin boards or take part in usenet groups (36%). There is then a sizeable gap between the next popular reason for using the Internet, namely:
Significantly, very few companies or individuals at the moment use the Internet for commercial trading or financial transactions (Only the supplier community currently use the Internet for this purpose).
Q: How do you see this use changing over the next two years? All those interviewed agree that their reasons for using the Internet will change significantly in the medium term. All areas of activity are set to skyrocket.
The most significant change is in the take-up of the Internet for trading or financial transactions. Across all sectors, 51% of respondents said that they will use it for trading - up from an initial 7% .
Still the highest expected use of the Internet is as a medium for publishing sales/marketing information and gathering market intelligence with 88% and 81% respectively of all organisations predicting they will use it for this end.
Other growth areas are an increased use of the Internet for recruitment (up from 20% to 45%) and for advertising campaigns (up from 24 to 60%). The use of bulletin boards is expected to double (up from 36 to 70%).
Conclusion
From the survey results, it appears that many users are still committed to using EDI for Electronic Commerce. They recognise the lack of EDI connection between the major Value Added Data Network service Providers (VADs) but say this causes them slight rather than major problems. From analysing the responses it appears that suppliers are sometimes out of step with the user community but that the responses of consultants often mirrors the views of user organisations. This difference of opinion comes through when asked the most significant technology over the next 12 months. Having said that however, viewpoints converge again when asked for a longer term perspective.
Thirty supermarket outlets in the Netherlands are now selling computer consumables alongside their more normal fare. The distributors, Despec Supplies, say the disks, ink, CD Roms and so on, branded Computer Food, are selling well and there are plans to extend the scheme to other EU countries.
The Sony Visiontouch should be on sale within a year. Used to control PCs, TVs video recorders etc, it has been christened the "air mouse" and has just one button, which is use to control an onscreen desktop.
Psion Dacom have just launched a new PCMCIA modem card which connects to standard or mobile phones - at present Alcatel and Panasonic phones are supported, with plans to extend the range to other mobiles. There is presently no industry standard for mobile phone data connections. Cost of the new PC card? About £200 in the UK.
Post office vans in China are now being tracked with GPS (the Global Positioning System) and can be pinpointed to a 50 yard radius. Snailmail goes electronic!
For the latest news on Intranet technology, visit the Sun site on http://www.sun.com. They thought of it first!
Looking for a cheap backup solution? UK company Danmere (+44 1606 74330) are selling Backer, a PC card which uses an ordinary video player and tape for backup/restore purposes. A 3-hour tape will hold around 1.5 gigabytes, with transfer rates averaging around 6 megabytes a minute. Price around £50.
