News on 21 September 2000
Jeremy Myerson, Director of the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre,
discussed the practical as well as the psychological issues of working
from home in the FM Inter@ctive arena at FM Expo yesterday. He told his
audience about the historical perspectives of working, from the industrial
revolution to our modern information revolution. According to Jeremy,
we are now ‘reuniting the spheres’ as work and life are becoming
more drawn together. Work enters your home, but the home environment also
enters the workplace to a larger extent than before. We now find dens,
dining tables etc. in the modern workplace, all of course due to the fact
that we work more and in different ways.
Jeremy
also explained the various types of homeworkers: the contained, which
have very strict borders between the work and the home environment, with
an area especially set aside for working. The next model is the permeable
type, who change with the environment around them. This type will be filling
in tax returns whilst feeding the children with the other hand. The last
two models are each other’s opposite – the overflowing and the
imploding type. The first lets work take over the home environment, whilst
the latter lets the home life take over and therefore they can’t
work as effectively as they should.
At last week’s Telework 2000 conference speakers stressed the importance
of having an area set aside in your home for working - Myerson showed
that this is only one model and the reality is not usually as straightforward.
He described Royal College of Art student design projects for furniture
and other items that can facilitate your life as a homeworker. One example
was the dining table which could easily be folded and transformed into
a work desk, which means you will be working in the dining room with the
rest of your family around.
