Amongst some bosses there appears to be a mentality that if you are not in the office then you can’t be working. I suspect that this attitude comes from how they themselves operate if they are not in the office. Maybe their attitude towards teleworking says more about their own working practices than anything else. Thankfully, attitudes appear to be changing. There has been steep rise in the number of people who engage in 'teleworking' (i.e., people working from home). Teleworking is no longer the sole domain of the self-employed or low-paid outworkers. Many jobs do not lend themselves to working from home, however, academia is one profession that working from home can bring great dividends. Many people love the thought of a day at home working without gossiping colleagues, non-essential meetings, and constant interruptions. This may also be very attractive to those working on a PhD! Surveys have shown that teleworkers are 60% more efficient when compared to their officebased counterparts (Lawrence, 1999). One in twenty people in the UK now work at least one day a week from home (Welch, 1999a; Lawrence, 1999) and save themselves an average of two hours commuting time (Welch, 1999b). According to the Henley Centre, more than 50% of the workforce will be working from home by 2010 (Cook, 1999)
