Remote working is plugging skills gap - Plantronics

Emotional price of commuting too high for many workers, claims headset vendor

Working from home and avoiding the "emotional cost" of daily commuting is helping plug the IT skills gap, according to headset vendor Plantronics.

Paul Dunne, the firm's UK and Ireland channel boss, claims its channel partners are cashing in on selling its technology, as it offers users a passport to a less stressful life.

He said that the boom in staff working from home means the industry can more easily recruit - and crucially, retain - the best staff.

"It's about the emotional cost," he said. "Do you want to use the Underground? Choose your poison for 60 to 90 minutes. Frankly, I get such a kick out of the fact I can be at my desk at 8am, after having dropped my son at school, and my neighbour has left an hour beforehand and is still stuck in traffic. It's about human dignity.

"For our offices in Royal Wootton Basset, you would typically expect our talent pool to be in a 50-mile radius around that. But our talent pool is wherever we decide, and wherever people happen to live.

"I think it's a blessing for everyone: it's a blessing for people who don't have to commute every day; it's a blessing for everyone who do have to commute because there are fewer people commuting - we accept there are jobs where you need to be in a certain place. It's a blessing for organisations themselves because if you let people work like that, attrition drops and your talent pool increases. There is very little downside."

Figures from the union TUC from last summer show that the number of people regularly working from home has increased by more than 800,000 since 2005 to more than 4.2 million. It claims although the number of people in employment has grown over that period, this has been outstripped by the increase in people working at home.

Dunne admitted that this boom does cause some anxiety, as managers struggle with coaching a team they cannot see. But with that in mind, the firm has created its own in-house guide for managers of remote teams, which is available for their channel partners too.

"As a business, we went from four buildings to one," he said. "We can measure an increase in productivity and we have hard data around what happens to our attrition stats. When partners come in, we allow our IT people and our HR director [to talk to partners] and we encourage them to have that 'warts and all' conversation. What are the pitfalls? What do you avoid? What is best practice?"