This will not surprise portfolio workers many of whom do one or more of their jobs from home but it is interesting that the TUC have now released figures which show that the the number of people working from home has risen by 13 per cent in the last five years.
Just over four million employees said that they mainly worked from home in 2012, an increase of 470,000 since 2007, according to an analysis of previously unpublished data from the Labour Force Survey.
The south-east, Scotland and Wales saw the sharpest rise in homeworking over this period.
Gender-wise, two-thirds of homeworkers were male, the figures showed, but an increasing number of women were also making this career move.
Women took the majority of new homeworking roles being created, said the TUC, but this was partly due to the fact that 81 per cent of these new jobs were part-time.
In addition to the four million people who usually worked from home, many millions more occasionally worked from home, found the research.
The TUC said that this rise in homeworking – in spite of many fearing that the recession would halt flexible working practices – confirmed that it had become an essential part of the UK labour market.
Very interesting to see that the TUC is seeing exactly the same changes in the nature of employment that some of us have been discussing for the past few years.
I did post on this topic 2 years ago but am revisiting it as this week I gave another talk to the ICAEW in the City at their headquarters. The seminar was on portfolio careers and I was kicking it off. As usual my session was followed by Nigel Peters from Alium Partners talking about interim management. I am sometimes asked this question at these seminars and usually I respond by saying “Not really as it is more like a serial career as we describe it in our book. This is where someone after a certain period of time wants new challenges irrespective of how successful they have been with their last position”. However, I am increasingly finding people who do not necessarily do more than 2 jobs simultaneously but like to indulge their desire for multiple jobs and roles and projects by doing them sequentially. In the book we have 2 examples of people doing this. One lady was an accountant during the summer and a ski instructor and chalet manager in the winter. You could argue that this is clearly a portfolio career as the jobs are quite different whereas people taking interim management jobs are often doing the same thing but each one is just for a few months.
There are times when I realise that indeed I am still a recovering academic. It doesn’t really matter does it! The crucial thing is finding out what you want to do and then to do it. To indeed be the architect of your own future.
