Insurance firm Aviva has predicted that one quarter of the UK working population would be carrying out employment duties from their home within a decade. The desire to improve the work-life balance will encourage a major shift towards flexible working, home lifestyle manager Julie Fromant claimed.Home working offers a number of advantages over office-based operation says Gareth Osborne of APA. “The ability to work flexibly is a major bonus for all and APA employs home workers wherever possible to minimise our need for excessive overheads. The elimination of commuting time makes a big difference to the working day and people use these hours to work more effectively or to embrace leisure time that it is otherwise difficult to fit in. If you start at 7.00am, because you can, then why not take a couple of extra hours during the day to go for a work out or do the shopping. Reduced expenditure is the other major advantage of working from home, he said, especially the saving you can make on office and utility costs.
APA fully supports home working and believes that some of a PAs role could be executed at a distance. In a recent survey of Business Leaders APA has asked what percentage of a PAs time is currently flexible – the results will be published next month; watch this space.
APA
2 comments:
Could APA find or create a course instructing PAs and their bosses on how best to immplement home-working? I believe my boss and I could do a fair amount of our work away from the office and have a better lifestyle as a result. It wants to be called something like "How to make home-working work" or "Overcoming the psychological barriers to working from home". There is still this issue of trust that worries us and need a credible organisation to teach us how to get over it.
I am working on providing my own solution to home working as a PA. I have started my own business as 'VA' virtual assistant. I offer executive level personal assistance and administration support, remotely. There are a large and growing number of virtual assistants, some of which after a number of years now have very successful and expanding businesses throughout the world. It is possible for a VA to supply the same level of support to many businesses that possibly cannot afford finance or space for the employment of a full-time PA or administrator. Problem solved. Plus we are good for the environment, little or no travelling, you only pay for the actual hours worked, and we are tax deductible!
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