Points Of Interest: What Is It, Interview, Students, Downsides
Teleworking or also known as Telecommuting is as wikipedia.com describes as “a work arrangement in which employees enjoy limited flexibility in working location and hours”. Teleworking basically means working from home. This effectively means that instead of someone spending the time, effort and hastle of travelling to an office or any other work place; instead they can work at home. A motto which is often used to describe this is “work is something you do, not something you travel to”.Teleworking can be “completed” in a number of ways from using a remote access feature from a pc to connect to another pc or just e-mailing on another. The feature of using remote access is where a user can remotely access another machine over an internet connection using dedicated remote access software. Using remote access enables people to access a computer from anywhere in the world instead of having to physically be at the computer station. Another positive feature is time saving. As opposed to someone saying having to travel a couple of hours to just see if a computer has a particular file, you can use remote access to access the desired computer remotely and see if the file is there. Also, you are in fact able to work on anything from a work document to perhaps managing a small network as if you were actually at the workstation using the computer. 
From a company’s point of view using remote access is a two handed argument. Remote access can prove a money saver for company’s so instead of having people unnecessarily in the office, they could bring the office home. Also instead of spending vast amounts of money on people travelling for very minor things, they could use remote access instead. On August 13th 2006 The Sunday Times reported “Let the office come to you”. The report revealed statistics such as how the Office for National Statistics reveals that about 3.2 million people in the UK now “telework” - work all or part of the week from home - and about 250,000 more are doing so every year. This is a clear indication that teleworking is something that is becoming more and more popular each year.
However, using facilities such a remote access isn’t always what it is cracked up to be. Remote access can almost be a “hackers dream” as enabling the feature without the correct software in place such as a firewall can leave a computer very vulnerable to hackers attacking the system. This could prove even more deadly if in fact remote access is opened up not correctly on server machines. Some company’s are trying to attract more people to use remote access functions but are trying to keep the risk of an attack to a minimum by offering “Secure Remote Access”. Juniper networks are one company which offer SSL VPN appliances.
I interviewed Adel Al-Shehab, Global Design and Planning Manger of Imperial Tobacco, who currently use an SSL VPN remote access appliance. Mr Al-Shehab said “This enables our employees to securely access resources remotely e.g. from home, airports, hotels. This gives flexibility for employees to work from anywhere at anytime thus improves productivity and communication. Mr Al-Shehab later added on how employees generally feel satisfied with the service available to them at present. He did add however that there were some important points to the service which need to be addressed. “Security, maintenance and support are challenging and require care and consideration. Any such system must be communicated with the business to manage user expectations. A system which runs 24/7 but it can supported 24/7?”.
As well as remote access, teleworking may involve just basically working on a document remotely and then transferring it back to the office. People may choose to work on documents somewhere else and then e-mail them back to the office or desired place. They may also transfer the file using a storage medium such as a USB memory stick. Another feature which is becoming more and more popular in “the 21st century” office is the use of docking station for laptops. This enables people to slot their laptop into the docking station and work using a monitor as if it were a desktop pc. Peripherals such a mouse and keyboard are all connected into the docking station. After the user has finished their day in the office they can take the laptop out of the docking station and work using the laptop from anywhere else.
The use of transferring documents doesn’t just affect companies. Students can also make use of this by say “finishing” some work from home and e-mailing it back into school or transferring from a storage medium. The features of working form home may also simply included telephoning one another be it over the internet or using a mobile phone. On 6th October 2005 BBC News reported “The rise of the teleworkers” on how teleworking is becoming ever more popular across the UK.
Teleworking does have a downside though. Instead of say going out and about to the office using teleworking you would just stay indoors. It is 
said that this can cause lack of social skills. So instead of interaction with others around the office you would merely be working in the same environment (at home) all day in front of a PC. Not going to work can also dent fitness and just perhaps get boring working a home not seeing anyone or anything new all day. Another downside is the temptation of working with no supervision. People may find that the un-supervised freedom is a little too much and instead of working may just “bunk off” work and not work as efficiently as they may do in a working environment. All in all, teleworking can prove to be either a perfect solution for a company or a nightmare solution. However figures are showing that teleworking is in fact working so just how long till everyone is at home working?