2. Teleworking advantages for the employee

Work the hours you want

You may be able to work the hours you want, so if you like to get up at 6am and finish by lunchtime, you *may* be able do that. Likewise, if you are a sleepyhead, you can stay in bed until noon and work until late in the evening.

You can take a break when you want one. You can stop to chat to a friend if the phone rings or watch something on the TV.

On the other hand, if your company is expecting you to be available during office hours, then you may not have as much flexibility as you think - for example you may have a customer-facing job and so you need to be at the end a telephone line during normal office hours.

Organise hours around family needs

It makes possible to work around family commitments, for example dealing with young children or elderly parents.

Save traveling time and costs

It saves a huge amount of time that would normally be spent traveling to work. There is no need to spend an hour or more each morning and evening stuck in traffic jams.

You save the cost of petrol that you would normally need to travel to work and also the cost of car parking tickets.

Environmental benefits

You help reduce your global warming carbon footprint by not burning up fuel, on the other hand you will need to heat the home office and use extra electricity so it may not be as effective as it first appears.

Collaborate with others

Working over the internet means that it is possible to collaborate with other people around the world without having to meet in person. For example, you may be an artist working for a magazine, your job is to create images to support stories in the magazine. So you collaborate with the authors around the world who are writing the stories. There is no need for you to be physically together - each of you send your contribution to the magazine where the editor puts the story together (even the editor could be working from home!).

Short summary

• Flexible working hours
• Work around family obligations (young children, elderly parents)
• Can take a break during the day (walk the dog or catch the news)
• Save lots of time on traveling to and from work
• Save lots of fuel and parking costs
• Saves on global warming to some extent
• Collaboration is easy with internet connection