Margaret Grene works for a Japanese-owned software company, CSK Software. The company's Irish operation is based in Dublin and Grene manages its documentation needs - either working on the material herself, or acting as co-ordinator between CSK and its outsourced suppliers.
An MSc graduate in information systems from the London School of Economics, Grene worked in Britain for five years before returning to Ireland to become quality assurance manager for CSK in Dublin. Two years ago, she made big changes to her working life: she moved jobs within CSK from quality control to software documentation, and moved office from Dublin to her home in Co Kilkenny.
"My husband is a farmer, with all that entails in terms of long working hours - and with me commuting to Dublin it was a pretty difficult lifestyle," she says. "I loved my job, but I was finding the commuting increasingly difficult, especially in the winter.
"I was beginning to think about the feasibility of doing something from home, but I knew I couldn't keep my job in quality assurance because it would be impossible to run that type of a department remotely. The company's management were very positive in their attitude towards my dilemma; in fact, it was they who suggested I should consider another type of job within CSK which I could do from home. "I was very pleased about this because although there are IT departments in some of the bigger companies in the area, it would have been impossible to stay specifically in software. which is what appeals to me," she says.
"I'm what would be considered a `teleworker', which is someone who works at a distance from their employer using IT to link into their company. I have an office at home with phone, fax, modem and so on. I work a normal 40-hour week and I am a full-time employee of CSK. "I go to Dublin once or maybe twice a week for meetings, but otherwise I'm home-based."
Her work is particularly well suited to the task. "Software documentation lends itself to teleworking in a way that a people-management job would not, and remote working has been made a lot easier by the big improvements which have taken place in technology and telecommunications infrastructure," Grene continues.
"I think teleworking is a brilliant idea, but it needs to be done in a planned and supported way. You have to want to make it work and it is important to have some means of measuring what you're doing. "It's only natural that employers and fellow employees like the comfort of having people around and being able to see them putting in the hours. But they don't have that when you work from home, so there has to be trust between people - and also a method by which your performance can be assessed, to avoid any feeling that because you're away from the office you're out shopping or in the kitchen drinking cups of tea all the time.
`It can be an isolated way of working, and I do enjoy my trips to Dublin and the opportunity of meeting people. I think it may be a way of working that suits older people better, because one is more settled and self-contained," she says.
Assumpta Harvey is a senior technical trainer with the Dun Laoghaire-based Ericsson Systems Expertise, a subsidiary of the Swedish giant LM Ericsson. A graduate in maths physics from UCG, she worked as a secondary school teacher in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, before taking a career break in 1993.
"Initially I had planned on going to the Middle East, but a friend told me about a job in the training department of Ericsson. I followed up on this instead and spent three years with the company involved in training," she says.
She then returned briefly to teaching before starting to work full-time for Ericsson from her home in Letterkenny last September. "The job is very challenging and it's not something I would be able to do locally," she says. "I work on the development and delivery of training courses for telecommunications companies worldwide - and with the pace of change in the telecommunications industry, my job is developing all the time too.
"Teleworking is already well established in Sweden, so Ericsson's were receptive to the idea of people working from home," Harvey continues. "Also, the company had invested heavily in my training and it would take time and money to replace me, so it made sense for them to keep me on. "I loved the job and really wanted to stay with the company, but I also wanted to work from home and I was delighted that they were prepared to go with this arrangement. "Ericsson's now have three people working from home dotted around the country. I work a full week and I have certain core hours during which I am always at my desk. I have a room in my house set up as an office with a dedicated business line and modem connection, and while there were some initial technical teething problems, they have now been sorted out and it's working very well. I go to Dublin about once a month and to Sweden when necessary as well.
"I really enjoy working like this - although it does get lonely at times and I think you would need to have the right sort of personality to be happy at it. Sometimes I feel a bit isolated so I send an email to get a bit of interaction going with one of my colleagues or I phone my boss for a chat.
"In the main I am well disciplined, but, sure, there are some days when you don't feel like settling down to work. But you have to keep yourself at it."
