62.8 per cent of Homeworkers are Male
June 30, 2015
Working as I do flexibly and, most of the time, from my home office, I found this article by Louisa Symington-Mills very interesting, especially the statistic that 62.8 of homeworkers are male.
In this article she focusses on the problems of one partial homeworker encountering negative cultural perceptions of homeworking in her workplace and Louise gives some sound advice.
It is, perhaps, surprising that such cultural issues still exist, but they do. Last year I came across an organisation that only allowed home working in very limited circumstances such as when a new boiler was being fitted in an employee’s house or a repairman for a broken washing machine was awaited. Worse that than, their presenteeism was so strong that they insisted employees arrive in their Central London head office on the dot of 9am, something which can be impossible if there are problems on the tube. In fact they disciplined and fired someone who regularly arrived in the office at 9.05am. Thankfully such extremes are rare.
In June, the Trades Union Congress released analysis of unpublished data from the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey showing that the number of people working from home increased by 800,000 over 10 years to more than four million employees in 2015 (13.7 per cent of the workforce). And far from being a ‘women’s’ (or worse, mother’s) issue, their findings showed that 62.8 per cent of homeworkers are male.
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