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Teleworking characteristics
Teleworking characteristics
As part of this study, the Sensis® Business Index and the Sensis® Consumer Report asked both individuals and businesses about the way they telework. When examining this data it should be remembered that two quite different populations are being surveyed here – individuals who are responding about their own experiences; and business owners who are responding about how they incorporate teleworking into the organisational context.
Looking at individuals first, the Sensis® Consumer Report found that of those Australians who teleworked, over half (54 per cent) did this work in their home. The other main place where telework was performed was at a client’s or customer’s premises (31 per cent). On top of this, Australians did their work at a range of other locations including in vehicles, at interstate or overseas locations, in hotels and motels, in coffee shops, libraries and airports and other corporate premises that were not the usual place of work (35 per cent in total for other responses). There is a certain amount of cross-over represented in this statistic, with some Australians doing telework in multiple locations. The most common amount of telework that was performed on a weekly basis for individuals was up to five hours, with over four in five reporting that they spent up to a quarter of their working week teleworking. Teleworkers were most likely to be full-time employees (62 per cent), followed by part-time employees (16 per cent); business owners with employees (14 per cent); and business owners with no employees (eight per cent).
Looking at the organisational context, the Sensis® Business Index found that most businesses had up to five people teleworking, keeping in mind that in the Australian context most businesses have less than five employees. Most businesses reported that their employees did telework at a client’s or customer’s premises (52 per cent), closely followed by their homes (49 per cent) and elsewhere (24 per cent), with multiple locations again provided in responses to this question. Apart from the home and client premises, other locations mirrored the responses provided by individuals and included: vehicles, other business premises, meetings and conferences, interstate and overseas locations, cafes, airports and remote country areas. Again, most employees were teleworking up to five hours a week, however slightly higher hourly numbers were given by businesses in their responses.
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