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Erfaringer med hjemmekontorløsninger i statstjenesten
Bjørnholt, Margunn
2002
Rapport ; 2002:1
Norwegian
English summary
The aim of this study was to study personal and organizational effects and experiences with home
office-based work within the Norwegian state administration and public sector. Four organizations
were selected for the study. These organizations had all implemented some home office based
professional work, differing in scale and method of implementation.
The organizations included a Ministry, a surveillance body, a regional college and a local social
security office. The study was conducted mainly through group interviews with homogenous groups
within each organization.
The employees using the homework opportunity commonly worked one to two days a week from their
home office. The home workers were generally content with their new form of work, and reported few
problems regarding shifts from home to workplace work periods, combining the two forms of work, or
regarding housework and family obligations at home.
The main problems that appeared were linked to non-satisfactory technological arrangements,
including problems related to data security (office 'firewalls', problems logging on from home, and
similar). Also, there was a lack of practical and organizational arrangements at the work place. This
made home office based professional work less effective and produced some extra work for others in
the organization.
Both colleagues and leaders were supportive of home working. The home offices of the employers in
the organizations had mainly been created on an ad hoc basis, connected to what was seen as special
needs of special people and in special situations - rather than a comprehensive leadership and work
reorganisation strategy. Although only one of the four organisations showed a more explicit resistance
to the new form of work, the technological and practical difficulties could be seen as an effect of a
lack of substantial strategically support from the organisation leadership.
A general conclusion is that home working employees often face technical and practical difficulties,
and that these problems can be indirect expressions of traditional organisational and leadership views,
restricting the possibilities of further expansion of the new form of work.
Another important theme for further investigation is the potential for using home office based work as
a strategy for a more inclusive working life, reducing the exclusion of persons with health problems
from the labour market and similar, which was a theme in three of the organizations we studied.