Published by David Morris on 17 Dec 2007 at 09:37 am
LIW Discussion
Questions Raised by Senior Management of BES
How would university property provided for LIW workers be insured?
This would need to be decided but presumably the university’s normal insurance arrangements would apply.
Who would answer telephone enquiries?
The smartphone provided as part of the LIW package would work on university 4-digit extension numbers; staff on LIW would be expected to be contactable in the normal way.
How would groups be identified for phasing in LIW?
“Groups” is probably the wrong word; “cohorts” would be better. BES managers would make the decision but there is no implication that all staff in a cohort would be from a particular area of the Faculty.
Staff need to be able to meet with students and colleagues on a confidential and private basis. How would this happen?
Bookable private meeting spaces would be provided.
How is LIW for teaching staff linked to the development of e-learning?
The e-learning tool set and environment is now very powerful and allows for synchronous online face-to-face activity as well as “traditional” e-learning activity. Staff will be supported in designing and delivering courses which make use of such tools.
What management issues have emerged from previous experience with LIW? Do managers fear not being able to have access to their staff?
There is no reason to suppose that staff on LIW arrangements are less accessible. Staff have a responsibility to make themselves accessible. In any case one of the locations at which people work will be the “office”.
Academic staff love their rooms and will fear losing their space. How do you convince staff who already work partly from home to join the scheme?
Firstly they will be better supported if they join the scheme. Secondly the formal recognition that LIW is a valid form of working will offer some protection to staff who do work from home. Thirdly providing offices to staff who use them only part of the time is unlikely to be sustainable in the future. Fourthly those who join the scheme will be informed volunteers.
Issues Raised by the Equal Remote Working Project
A major finding of the Equal Project (The Coventry University part is known as “Adjust the Balance”) was that there is a lot of remote working but this rarely occurs within a formalised process. None of the organisations surveyed had done an analysis of what they wanted from remote working or how they should go about introducing it. This even extended to the ICT aspects and in particular how remote workers would be supported from an ICT perspective. None of the people involved felt adequately prepared to start remote working. The major issues were (i) ICT competence (ii) work issues (iii) social and psychological issues (for example feelings of isolation). Many staff felt that remote working was “something being done to them” and the rationale was not explained. In consequence many felt threatened and saw the introduction of remote working as a cost-cutting exercise.
The technical knowledge of organisations looking at introducing remote working was often dated as was that of many of the people chosen to participate. There were both unrealalistic perceptions of what could be done and what could be achieved. Many organisations started with the technologies they knew something about rather than analysing what they wanted to achieve and then scanning for appropriate technologies to help.
There was little understanding of the tri-partite nature of remote working and that the IT, people and organisational aspects had to be considered together.
The major concerns identified in the survey work were (i) the suitability of jobs for remote working (ii) whether the level of customer service would decline (iii) issues of trust (iv) managers fearing that they would lose control.
It is of prime importance to separate consideration of the job from the individual currently performing the role.
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bsx902 on 24 Feb 2008 at 11:51 am #
The advice from the University on insurance is summarised here:
The University’s insurance policy only covers University owned property so physical damage/theft etc to any kit not belonging to us would not be covered.
With regard to the liability cover..the obvious answer is that this would only apply if we were considered liable. The current LIW situation is managed by the University; in as much as we supply the kit and install it in staff’s LIW location, if anything untoward goes wrong for which we were considered to be blameworthy then the University would be covered on our combined liabilty policy. If anything set up by the employee subsequently goes wrong then it’s difficult to see how the institution could be liable.
University insurance cover in the LIW context it is still a relatively grey area as we haven’t as yet (touch wood) ever had had any problems concerning LIW. If there were problems that may lead to a negligence claim then each case would be considered on its merits.
It may be worth noting that individual home policies of the staff concerned may need to be endorsed with the fact that they are using their homes as a place of work as non-disclosure of this fact could compromise their own cover should they need to consider any claims.
David Morris on 24 Feb 2008 at 12:06 pm #
The following is an extract form the current tax regulations as they apply to LIW (Tax Bulletin Issue Number 68).
Teleworkers: Reimbursed Expenses And Benefits For Employees Working At Home
Increasing numbers of employees are working wholly or partly at home. A recent report by The Work Foundation (”Time to go home: embracing the homeworking revolution” by Tim Dwelly and Yvonne Bennion) suggested that 2.2 million employees in the UK (about 7.4% of all employees) work at home at least one day a week using a telephone or computer. Around one million employees work mainly at home. The number of employees working at home is increasing by around 13% a year.
The great majority of these home workers are employees who are sometimes referred to as teleworkers; workers who rely on the use of computers and telecommunications to carry out office work at home. Government policy aims to support employers that seek to provide better work-life balance opportunities.
In the last few years a number of changes to legislation have been made to help employers support teleworkers and other employees who agree to work at home without incurring a tax charge or liability for NICs. This article looks at that legislation and also at tax relief for expenses incurred by teleworkers as a result of working at home.
Employer provided equipment
Employers can now provide all of the computing facilities, telecommunications links, office furniture and supplies that a teleworker needs to work at home, without a tax charge. This is achieved by:
Section 316 ITEPA 2003, which provides an exemption for provided furniture, equipment, supplies and services where the employer’s sole purpose in providing them is to enable the employee to perform the duties of the employment and any private use is not significant.
An article in Tax Bulletin 49 (”Schedule E benefits in kind - part business use and part private use”) provides further guidance, this exemption can extend to the provision of a telephone line in the employee’s home and to broadband Internet access in the circumstances described in EIM21615 in the Inland Revenue’s Employment Income Manual;
Section 320 ITEPA 2003, which permits a limited exemption for provided computer equipment up to the first £500 of cash equivalent. Where this limit is exceeded the exemption in Section 316 ITEPA 2003 can apply to the excess.
Where benefits are exempted from tax there is no liability for Class 1A NICs (Section 10(1)(a) SSCBA 1992).
Expense payments to the employee
New legislation in Section 316A ITEPA 2003 applies with effect from 6 April 2003 to prevent any tax charge where an employer makes payments to employees to reimburse the additional household expenses that they incur in working at home. There is further guidance on this at EIM01472. Such payments could already be made without a NICs liability arising.
Exempt payments can be made where there are arrangements between the employee and the employer under which the employee regularly works at home. This covers employers’ homeworking policies but will not cover employees who work at home informally and not by arrangement with the employer. So, for example, the new exemption will not apply to employees who simply take additional work home in the evenings.
The exemption applies to employees who do some or all of their work at home with the agreement of the employer instead of working on the employer’s premises. For example, the new exemption could apply to payments made to an employee who arranges to spend two days each week working at the office and the other three days working at home.
The additional expenses that the employer may reimburse are those connected with the day to day running of the employee’s home. This might include additional costs of heating and lighting the work area, or the metered cost of increased water use. There might also be increased charges for Internet access or telephone use. In some cases work at home may lead to an increase in household contents insurance or to a liability for business rates. It might be difficult for employers to calculate the exact amount of additional costs that an employee is incurring as a result of working at home. So we have published a guideline rate of £2 per week that can be paid to employees working regularly at home without the employer having to justify the amount paid or the employee having to keep any records to demonstrate the additional expenditure.
The £2 per week figure is not a maximum, and greater amounts can be paid where the employer provides evidence to justify them. There are two ways to do this. The employer can agree in advance with their Inland Revenue office on a scale rate payment that is calculated to do no more than reimburse the average additional costs that the employees are meeting while working at home. It may be useful to agree that the scale rate payment can be increased annually in line with inflation. If the employer has agreed a scale rate payment based on reasonable estimates of additional household costs derived from records of costs kept by employees it is not necessary for employees to keep subsequent evidence of costs incurred.
Alternatively, an employer may prefer to reimburse the actual additional costs incurred by each employee. In such cases we would expect the employer to keep records to show how the payments have been computed. In turn this will depend on evidence retained by the employee about the amount of additional costs.
Anne Dickinson on 21 Jul 2008 at 12:34 pm #
Using an eee PC
This is light, gives Internet access and I was able to access CUOnline VLE, PebblePad and Curve. PebblePad gave the most problems as it needed to be magnified. For the others, I needed to do a vertical scroll more often than on other computers.
However - I wouldn’t like to work too long as I might end up like Schroeder from Peanuts!
Schroeder:
http://tinyurl.com/5xio
I uploaded the following reports to Curve. They include screens of the eee. I did this entirely from the eee:
First Report:
http://tinyurl.com/6q6c6z
Accessing CUOnline:
http://tinyurl.com/67gwcy
I intend to take the eee to the next conference that I attend.
Anne Dickinson on 21 Jul 2008 at 1:46 pm #
Anne’s LIW Diary
I am writing a diary of things that happen during my LIW pilot phase. It can be viewed here:
http://l-iw.blogspot.com/
admin on 21 Jul 2008 at 2:03 pm #
Can I suggest you use Cuba for your LIW blog, this will tie in nicely with the LIW Support Web http://cuba.coventry.ac.uk/liwsupport/
If you need help to create an account etc. have a look at http://cuba.coventry.ac.uk/roughguide/2008/06/11/change-you-profile/
John