Loneliness of the long-distance worker a hazard to be avoided

Chats around the water cooler, coffee with colleagues, office banter - these are aspects of work that can be lost if you decide to work from home. While the financial and business implications of home-working are often discussed, the human implications are frequently ignored. This is a mistake, says Prof Eunice McCarthy, a social organisational psychologist.

The workplace provides comfort arenas where people feel cosy and happy. "It brings people together. Even if the work is uninteresting, it gets people working with other people. It boosts self-esteem and can act as a stress buffer for people because they can throw ideas around. When people work from home, they miss that kind of contact." Prof McCarthy says courses on starting your own business often ignore this issue. "Studies carried out since the 1980s have shown that working from home can be very isolating. So people have to build up a new social network for themselves. They have to space out their work in different ways. You pick up information from people at coffee time, for example. It's very important but we don't place any value on it."

She advises home-workers to set up meetings with clients or business contacts so they continue to work. "In this way, they are investing in business and self."

As for employees who move from the office to telework, Prof McCarthy says they should understand they are moving away from the political culture of an organisation. "In more traditional, hierarchical types of organisations, there is the danger that if you are not visible, you may be left out when it comes to promotions, for example. Some organisations are not yet geared to understand the dynamics of teleworking."

In these cases, she emphasises the importance of calling to the office and taking part in core meetings. For the self employed Prof McCarthy says that, although they are very motivated, they can experience anxieties and uncertainties and miss colleagues' support. "But it's a very exciting time because you are taking control and carving out your career."

She also highlights the tendency, of women in particular, to take on the job of child care when they work from home. "That's the down factor. Teleworkers can take on too much and neglect their own needs." Nevertheless, Prof McCarthy says working from home has changed the way we think about work. "Now we carry our competencies with us. We are evolving and learning all the time. The old `civil service' rigid structures are going. But we should be aware of the social implications."

Ms Catherine O'Kane loves working from home but she misses the chats and the social interaction which a workplace offers. Catherine (29) worked in various insurance companies for 10 years but had always wanted to run her own business. She did this in January when she set up Helping Hand Office Services from her home in Westmanstown, Co Dublin. The move also gave her an opportunity to spend more time with Aoife, her 9 1/2 -month old baby.

Catherine had always enjoyed the social aspects of work. "I'm a real chatterbox and I love company. I love meeting people of my own age and it can be very hard to do that when you are working from home because all your friends are working too. And part of you just wants to talk about work all the time."

Friends advised her to make a point of meeting people for lunch but with a baby at home, that has proven difficult. "I must try to organise a structure to my day so that I have time for myself," she says.

Catherine finds the temptation to phone a friend is tempered by thoughts of the phone bill. "I would be very conscious of the amount of time spent on the phone for that reason. Anyway, I prefer personal contact to a phone." She gets that contact when she drops her work into her client's office. "I e-mail most of my work in, but tend to drop in every now and then to have a chat with the others in the office. I enjoy that," she says. In the long term, Catherine would like to take on someone to care for Aoife so she could maintain "normal" working hours. At present she returns to her computer after the children have gone to bed, to make up for interruptions during the day. Isolation apart, Catherine is delighted with her change in circumstances. "It has given me a chance to put my own price on my work. I never really found my niche since I left college. I felt that, while I was a hard worker, I never got the rewards or recognition for it. Now that's changed."

MR Eamonn Kennelly was surrounded by people when he worked with Carbury Mushrooms for 11 years. Then he left to work from home, running an Internet site which organises golf tours for overseas visitors. "As work in the new business became more routine, I missed the social aspect of working with other people," he recalls.

Eamonn started working from his home in Leixlip, Co Kildare last September. Initially, he was meeting clients and travelling around with them, but when the tourist season finished in October, he found he was spending a lot of time on his own. Eamonn misses the opportunity to bounce ideas off his colleagues. "You don't have people that you can discuss work problems or issues with."

His season runs from April to October so he is back on the road again, meeting and entertaining clients. Thinking ahead, he intends to have a better structure on his working days by next winter. "I'll have to get out of the house more. Taking the kids to and from school is one way of doing that."

Eamonn emphasises the importance of having a clearly defined work space so that everyone knows that when you are there, you are at work. With two young children (aged five and eight years), he found it difficult to make them realise that, while he was at home, he was not available. He says it can also have major implications for a partner. "If your spouse or partner is at home full-time, suddenly they find that their space has to be shared."

In the long term, Eamonn feels working alone is not a good idea. "It's fine in the short term. There's no commuting and this frees up extra time. It's much more flexible as you can tailor work to suit yourself. But in the long term I don't think it is good for an individual to spend 40 hours or more a week on their own." Business is going well and Eamonn is looking at eventually setting up an office. "It's coming to decision time now, whether to stay small or go bigger. But whatever happens, I don't intend to be working from home in the long term."