Home run

Published:

UP TO eight million people in the UK run a commercial operation from their own home – and the strong indication is that this number will increase sharply.

But, even now, many small firms which operate from home are still plagued by misplaced stereotypical images of the past and, keen to punch above their weight, go to amazing lengths to hide the fact that they are running a business from their lounge or spare bedroom.

There is evidence, however, that changes are afoot. Multinational Goliath may ultimately decide that the SME he wants to go with has a corporate veneer, but home worker David is fighting back.

With the incredible advances in digital technology, more and more people are electing to work from home. This, in itself, may provide a completely different set of life-work balance stresses and issues, but the inescapable fact is that technology is enabling people to make the choice of “going to work” in their house.

And the general school of thought is that this will escalate immeasurably over the next decade.

The Government says that, currently, 13.5% of working adults in Scotland spend at least some of their time working from home.

It predicts that the proportion of people who could telework in the future is unlikely to exceed 40% without major economic restructuring, and concludes that, given the geography and demography of Scotland, e-working is relatively more important for the economy than for other parts of the UK.

About half of all people who start up businesses do so from home.

Many move to premises, but a growing number of business people are choosing to work from home permanently no matter how big their firm gets, and more than half of all new companies are now founded from home.

Key factors in the increase in home working are technology, which increasingly allows people to work anywhere, and demographics, fuelled by the large number of over-50s choosing to run their own firm and lifestyle.