One British worker in 16 is now a teleworker

Latest results from the UK’s Labour Force Survey show a continuing steady increase in teleworking. In Spring 2001, almost 1.7 million people worked at or from home in the UK for at least one full day per week in their main job, using a computer and a telephone. This represents 6.1 per cent of the workforce compared to 5.5 per cent last year, and is an 8 per cent rise in the absolute number of people doing some form of teleworking.

The definition used here covers only people who could not work at/from home without the aid of a computer and telephone. It includes both people who work at/from home all the time in their main job and those who worked at home at least one full day in the survey reference week in their main job.

If we look only at people who work mainly at home (and exclude the occasional homeworkers) the number of teleworkers drops to 1.1 million or 4.2 per cent of the workforce. Essentially there are three styles of teleworking:

• Teleworkers who spend most of their time working at home; these make up one-fifth of all teleworkers.

• Mobile workers who use home as a base; this group represent almost half of all teleworkers.

• People who work at home or from home occasionally (eg one day a week); these make up almost one-third of teleworkers.

Over half of these teleworkers (56 per cent) are employees. Men outnumber women by two to one, making up 67 per cent of all teleworkers. Compared with earlier years, this represents a slight growth in the proportions of teleworkers who are employees, and in those who are women.  One teleworker in eight (12.5 per cent) is disabled (compared with 11.75 per cent in the workforce as a whole). What work are they doing? Table 1 shows the breakdown of this teleworking workforce by occupation and employment status.

One of Britain’s growing band of teleworkers, electrical engineer John Butcher catches up on administrative work in his London home

The occupations fall into two main groups. First, there are the managerial, professional, administrative, secretarial and sales occupations, in which employees outnumber the self-employed teleworkers. These categories could be regarded as dominated by genuinely ‘new’ forms of teleworking, where employers have taken core office functions and transformed them into home-based or multilocational work using the new technologies. Then there are the skilled trades, craft and manual occupations which are dominated by self-employed people. These could be regarded as traditional small businesses based in the home, which have adopted the new technologies to make themselves more efficient. The ‘associated professional and technical’ category occupies an intermediate position, undoubtedly including a large number of freelance technicians.

Educated for self-sufficiency

Compared with the rest of the workforce, UK teleworkers are a highly qualified bunch, as can be seen from Table 2. Thy are more than twice as likely to be graduates, with 36.5 per cent having a university degree or equivalent, compared with only 15.1 per cent of the total workforce, and only 4.8 per cent having no formal qualifications (compared with 16.26 per cent of the workforce as a whole).