Home is where the heart... and work is

PHIL Bixby doesn't have far to travel to get to work. Just a few steps - down to the basement of his home in Holgate Road, York. The architect is one of more than two million Britons for whom home is also the workplace. He says he wouldn't have it any other way.

"At 9am I'm about to trek outside and down to my nice office, and when I look outside I see queues of people stuck in their cars," he says. "I think 'Christ alive, life can be so much easier!'"

Phil's workplace is enough to make any wage-slave stuck in a nine-to-five office job green with envy.

He's got a luxurious leather-covered chair, a couple of desks, one with a state-of-the-art personal computer, a pleasant rug in relaxing colours on the floor - and, in one corner, an aquarium. His window looks out on to the back yard of the home he shares with his partner Caroline Lewis.

It's quiet, warm and comfortable, without any of the distractions that plague you in a busy office - and it is his own space.

The advantages of working from home, however, go far beyond simply being able to create a comfortable working environment, he says.

There's the cost benefit, for one. Phil runs his own business, Constructive Individuals - and working from home saves him the cost of buying or renting an office elsewhere. He doesn't have to commute, and it means he can work flexible hours to suit himself.

Best of all, it means there's none of that distinction between home and work life that many of us feel. When his nine-year-old daughter Hannah is at home, she can see for herself what her dad spends his work days doing.

"When I was young, my dad went off to work in London every day, and after 15 years I still knew nothing about what he was doing. My daughter comes down, and if she sees I'm doing design work for a school playground, she can do some.

"She will say 'what are you doing? Can I have a go?' And some of the stuff she does is quite useful!"

It's good, Phil believes, his daughter is able to understand the importance of work. "She knows you need to work to earn a living."

Phil is not alone in having discovered the benefits of working from home - and there are plenty of them, social as well as individual. Think about how pleasant York could be, for example, if the streets weren't choked with commuter traffic. And with long working hours tearing at the fabric of family life, surely it would make sense if more people could work from home - reducing the time spent travelling to work and enabling family members to at least see each other more, and perhaps even share meals occasionally.

For North Yorkshire-based garden designer Rosie Allisstone, one of the biggest advantages of working from home - she has a studio at her home at Ampleforth - is that she can be with her two-year-old son Luke.

"In a way, it is a question of priorities," says Rosie, who runs her own company, Dream Gardens. "I would rather have more time with Luke. Working at home is more flexible. I can work around him, rather than going to a separate place to work and having to give him to a childminder."

Being there for Luke, however, isn't the only benefit, says Rosie. In fact, she began working from home five years or so ago - long before Luke was born.

"It just makes sense," she says. "It's less expensive. I don't have to drive to work, don't have to hire a studio. I just set a room aside."

It's also less of a time-waster. She finds it easier to concentrate without constant interruptions from colleagues. "So in some ways it is easier to meet a deadline."

With so much going for it, what is surprising is not that there are so many people like Phil and Rosie now working from home, but that there are so few.

With two million teleworkers the UK may have more than any other European company - but it is still a far cry from the half the workforce experts once predicted would be working from home by now.

It seems people and employers have been slow to take advantage of the opportunities the revolution in communications technology has offered.

Steve Wilson of Panasonic, which is developing a range of 'mini office' equipment for use at home and which is sponsoring National Work At Home Week this week, thinks we are conditioned to accept traditional patterns of working. But while there are certain forms of work that cannot be done from home, he says - manufacturing, bus driving - there are others for which home working is ideal. Any form of office, admin or field sales work, for example.

Let's face it, if many office workers already communicate with each other by e-mail why do they need to be gathered together in the same place when technology exists for them to work from home? For all its advantages there are a number of disadvantages to working from home. We are social animals - and despite all its irritations, many of us would miss the workplace.

Rosie Allisstone admits there is a downside. You have to be disciplined, or you could find motivation a problem, she concedes. And while her own work involves going out and meeting people a lot so she doesn't miss the social side of work so much, it could be lonely being home alone all the time.

However, Phil Bixby is disappointed home working hasn't taken off more.

He loves the flexibility, says there's no need to feel isolated thanks to video-conferencing - and is all in favour of cutting down on traffic and pollution.

But it has never quite happened, he agrees. Even 15 years ago, he says, he and architects like him were looking at designing houses that incorporated a work/office space, but the demand was not there.

He believes part of the reason is that 'going out to work' has become a symbol of status for some.

"Particularly for men, the fact they go off to a terribly important job in a big office, and drive a big car to get there is important. The idea of working from home and having that status taken away might be difficult."

Employers, too, are partly to blame. "They like to have their staff where they can see them. They have this idea that they would all sit around drinking cups of coffee and enjoying themselves.

"They haven't cottoned on to the idea that if you give people trust and freedom you get more from them."

Phil hopes they will. He loves being able to pick his daughter up from school, spend time with her when he wants, then work an hour or two when it suits him. "It's just so nice," he says.

Many would agree.

Updated: 11:06 Wednesday, April 17, 2002