Home working

There has been much debate over the need for flexible working during the London 2012 Olympic Games. As well as major roads in London being closed to the public, roads around regionalised events such as the cycling will also be restricted.

Many businesses are planning or preparing to allow home working during the games - but we envisage several problems with this approach.

• Generally internet traffic will be higher during the games and ISP’s at a local level may not be able to cope with all the increased demand in traffic.

• Many people working from home already notice slowdowns during peak periods, and this can only get worse with people watching the Olympics on-line. In addition children will also be off school whilst people are trying to work from home.

It is hard to manage and monitor home workers, sometimes jokingly known as “home Shirkers”.

• Firms will have to potentially invest in extra IT infrastructure. They certainly will need to improve support coverage for those working from home, so expect an increase in helpdesk costs. See the notes section at the end of this document as we expand on the technical challenges there.

• Information Security will be a nightmare with the addition of many new home workers and the potential for viruses and trojans to be passed to the corporate network from home.

• Team spirit is often lost when home working. Whilst the Olympics is a relatively short period for your temporary home workers, how, for example, is your sales team going to remain competitive if they are not able to have direct friendly rivalry or encourage each other to hit targets?

• Home workers tend to use their corporate mobile phones rather than their home phones. The sound quality / reception are often not acceptable.

• Some people actually want to get away from their family from time to time

Notes

In order for a companyto enable home working for their staff, the following issues will need to be addressed:

Each and every home worker’s ISP must be reliable and not packet shape or block corporate traffic.
The home worker’s ISP must also have low contention to the exchange. Minimum of 4mbit bandwidth recommended.
Home worker’s PC must be thoroughly checked to ensure no malware is present. Corporate grade antivirus software needs to be purchased and installed.
Any VPN or other secure access method needs to be upgraded, deployed and paid for.
Traders and other FSA regulated companies cannot work from home as trades and associated telephone calls need to be recorded on the relevant systems.
Potential need to migrate your applications to work via thin client e.g. delivered over citrix.
Be aware some legacy applications may not work remotely.
Bandwidth at your corporate HQ (or location where your servers and apps are located) will need to be increased to cope with the extra demand.
People relying on 3G networks to gain access to corporate systems need to pre check to ensure they have a good reliable signal. Also check that you are not going to be faced with huge mobile data bills.

Estimated costs

Extra bandwidth required at HQ between £500 and £2000 per month (depends on type of circuit)

Increase licensing on HQ firewall £1000+

Hardware firewall per home user £500

Extra application and antivirus licensing per home user £500 (depends on your application suites and their licensing models)

Mobile and home phone call chargers per user per month £40

Extra IT support resource £250 to £1000 per day (depends on number of extra contractors required)

Project plans to enhance infrastructure for home workers

Program Management	Home Worker pilot testing
	Budget allocation process to proactively plan for and acquire Home Worker technology
	Enhanced Home Worker program management and evaluation
Home Office	Company purchase of laptops in computer refresh cycles
Home Office	Company purchase of peripheral equipment for Home Workers
Services	Company financial support for broadband Internet connection
	Enhanced technical training for Home Worker stakeholders
	Technical support specific to Home Workers
Enterprise	Enhanced tools for remote collaboration and communication
	Greater remote access to agency applications and information
	Integration of security solutions into enterprise access applications

You also need to consider the costs and challenges with internet service providers:

Performance

The actual performance you will get depends on contention but also the distance from the exchange. Typical contention ration is 50:1, but sky and a couple of others are now claiming 33:1 now

If you then look into those packages in detail:

Sky “up to 20mb internet from £20 per month” is actually from £32.25 per month as you need to have sky telephone line rental. This is their basic package and you are limited to just 2gb of data download per month. If you are a “heavy user” then you will get a speed reduction of 90% imposed on you between 4pm and 11pm every day.

Sky “unlimited” = £44.75 per month when you add in line rental, but without the traffic management policy above.

Virgin “up to 10mb” is £5 per month for the first 3 months but then goes up to £13.50 per month. You also need to add in the £13.90 per month line rental!

Virgin have a lengthy acceptable use policy and a loss a traffic management policy. The Traffic policy is active between 4pm and midnight. If you hit their traffic restrictions then your available bandwidth is reduced to only 512kbit/sec between 4pm and midnight weekdays and 10am midnight all weekend.

If you provide a Sky unlimited package to your 100 of your non critical workforce you will be signing up for a 12 month contract for each employee this will cost your business £53,000.

Client Testimonials

MWB has always been very supportive and helpful as an office space provider. The staff are excellent and always willing to make the extra effort. Overall a very professional team.