SMH has a story (pub’d Oct 21) about telecommuting.

the article says toshiba and about 10 other companies (westpac, telstra, foster’s, pfizer, etc) worked together to promote flexible work practices. wow! that is so encouraging and fantastic!

the article points to the group’s output as – producing a ‘detailed and practical guidebook that issues such as setting up flexible working practices, managing people by performance rather than attendance and dealing with workplace culture and attitudes’. you can get that guidebook at toshiba’s flexible working website.

i’m not quite sure what to make of the SIG. there’s some major names and i know some of the smaller companies involved. i’m sure the work was done with the greatest intentions. it’s hard (at this point) to comment more because to receive the guide i had to fill out a form with my physical address and they will mail it to me. nope, you can’t download the guide. there are individual files you can download but it’s unclear if they’re part of the guide or extra bits. i’ll let you know.

one bit from the article i want to pull out – toshiba did research in 2004 on the attitudes of managers and employees towards flexible working. it seems like the SIG resulted from this research. a quote from the SMH article:

“One thing that came though very strongly in our research was that working from home was almost seen as a modern term for having a sickie,” Whittard says. “People would assume you’re out shopping, down the beach or playing golf. So before you let people work flexibly you have to look at their workload, clearly communicate what’s expected of them and measure their work fairly against that. Otherwise you get a level of mistrust, which is what our research found – that managers are less trusting of flexible workers and believe that employees disapprove of their colleagues who sometimes work away from the office.”

a sad state of affairs and probably the reason why a small step such as a guide was produced. you CAN download their research results entitled ‘Mobility & Mistrust. they list 5 key findings in their executive summary but actually 4 of the 5 can be read as issues around trust or rather not trusting employees. no wonder i had such a hard time finding companies to work with while i was doing the thesis.

will post more when i get the paper version.

an interesting article in SMH last week re: a 24 hr school where classrooms are replaced with ‘learning spaces’ and students learn via laptop and mobile phone. they are not totally doing away with the school from what i can tell (it’s a little unclear) but offering alternatives.

i don’t know the area of sydney where the school is but a A$40 million investment makes me think it’s in a wealthy area (here in au private schools tend to get more taxpayers money than public schools do – in addition to the tuition parents pay so they’re able to offer so much more). the article says the school is a catholic one and i’m not sure what the financial situation there would be.

unfortunately i’m not finding much coverage other than the linked to story. hopefully there will be some follow ups as this project progresses.