The very term “home workers” conjures up an image of the stay at home mum doing telesales whilst ironing and looking after the kids, or the wannabe millionaire setting up his own business in the living room. This simply is no longer the case.

More and more executives and companies alike are seeing the benefits of cutting overheads and traffic pollution, while giving their employees a chance to change their “life-work balance” to create a more productive and healthier workforce. The UK Census 2001 showed that 27.8 million people were working full or part time from home.  The image of your home being taken over by paperwork from the office and never being able to ignore the phone just in case it's important is long gone too. More people making the best use of their home for work and pleasure, by investing in a garden office or a home office in a garden building. This effectively creates a home / office divide, separating the dedicated phone and computer necessary for work from the day to day living of home and family life.

The "Time to go home – embracing the home working revolution" report from Work Foundation by Tim Dwelly and Yvonne Bennion, written in 2003, states “After years of speculation, a clear trend towards home working in the UK has emerged in Labour Force Survey figures. Over 2 million people work at home with telephone and computers for a least a day a week – a figure that has grown by an average of 13 percentage points a year since 1997. Growth is highest amongst employees, who now out number the self employed.” A clear indication then that working from home is not a fad but a trend that is growing yearly at a huge rate.

The Department for Education and Employment (DFEE) report "Work-Life Balance", written in 2000, states that approximately 20% of those employed work from home occasionally, that 35% of managers work from home occasionally and that 80% of all home workers are in fact the managerial staff. It also found that 1/3 of those not working from home have said that they would like to.

The “revolution” for home working is unique in the fact that it has been almost entirely instigated by the workers. They want to remove themselves from the office and work from their own home, even if only part time, and become free of the rat race that has become our working life. Imagine if you can what would be more productive, a hustle bustle rush to get in to work through peak hour traffic into an office crammed full of people, or getting up and having breakfast before a stroll down your garden to your own office where everything is as you left it and your house is in easy reach. It’s not hard to see the plus points. With advances in technology and security every day, even if the paperless office never happens, the home or garden office has become a real and tangible thing that many aspire to have.

Of course it’s not all roses around the door, home working comes with its cons as well as its pros. "The Quality of home experience for home workers" report by Dr Jeanne Moore and Tracey Crosbie for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in April 2003, a study which explored the ways in which working from home shapes home and family life for different groups of home workers, found “Home working itself does not necessarily disrupt home and family life, but is shaped by personal, social and physical factors. In this way, some home workers found that working from home enhanced home, while others found that it created spatial tensions”. Clearly when considering working from your own home, space is always going to be an issue. However, with the types of secure garden offices now available, the practical solution must lend itself to this.

With space being at a premium within the home for family life, many may consider a conservatory or even an extension. However, this can prove costly and time consuming when you consider the planning permission needed for such an undertaking. Again this is where a garden office, which can in fact add value to your home, would come into consideration. Although security is a large issue, when housing equipment needed for working at home, it can prove less cost effective to have a unit which is easily broken into. Bespoke garden offices solve the need to be secure with robust buildings, easy on the eye, within your garden space. The contemporary designs mean that garden offices may soon become as familiar as the garden shed. These garden offices however, are a lot less likely to be broken into with garden office high specification feature lists including double glazed windows and secure locks on the doors.

So with the revolution taking place, many employees and self employed, and even large companies, are in need of some practical advice on how to go about such a different and yet practical way of doing business. There are some web sites out there offering advice and support for these groups, not only with how to set up a home office or where to purchase such things as garden offices but also ensure that those who have chosen to work this way do not feel they have become isolated. Some such sites are;

www.dti.gov.uk/work-lifebalance

www.telework.org.uk

www.workingfamilies.org.uk

There are also many web sites offering work from home jobs although caution is advised to thoroughly check out any references given.

With the next UK Census due in 2011 speculation is rife as to what will be found, but it seems certain that with the trends as they are, and the pace of our lives seeming ever faster, the willingness to jump ship and become part of the mass of home workers is increasing. So, will you be one of the lucky ones in years to come, working a stone's throw from your back door, secure in the knowledge that many others are doing the same or will you still be making that daily run to the office, which by then, could easily be empty.