Fluffy slippers and trust.

A Robert Walters survey has found that 47.5% of respondents find working from home or on the move to be their best strategy and were not looking to come back to the office anytime soon.

In travel the home consultant has been around for a long time and with groups like MTA, Travel Managers and Travel Counsellors expanding daily, it comes as no surprise that other industries want to get on the band wagon.

Technology certainly allows the freedom to move about and with office rent escalating there should be an emphasis from many companies to send people home. There are of course issues, ranging from managing absentee staff to fragmenting teams and giving up control from an office environment.

With all of that to consider, there is only one question management needs to ask itself regarding staff working from home and it relates to trust from both sides. Do they trust the staff to achieve the results that seem to be so much easier to measure in the office? Do the staff trust management to keep them informed and connected? A company’s intimate working environment and team mentality depends to some extent on the relationship that CEOs and their executives have with the employees and this generally works better in an office set up.

So is this the new challenge, as we all head for the morning coffee in our pyjamas and fluffy slippers to do the emails at the breakfast table and then not get on the train and go to work at all?

Let me digress a moment and mention the people we all trust but who have no capacity to work from home.

For the 16th year in a row, nurses have retained their place at the top of the most trusted list, according to the Roy Morgan Image of Professionals survey. Along with pharmacists, doctors and dentists the top of the list is heavy with people you need to trust, sometimes with your life, sometimes with your teeth.

They all require office facilities and unless you are happy to have your teeth fixed on the lounge of the dentist in your street, they won’t have an opportunity others have to escape the normal office environment.

So those of you with the flexible work conditions should consider the trust management has put in you and maybe get dressed and work in the home office you have set up but never ventured into.

As an aside, it’s not a stretch to guess the bottom of the trust list and it includes TV reporters, newspaper journalists and opinion pollsters. Still further down, way below the sludge line, we have a couple of old favourites in the car salesman and the advertising executive who round out the bottom of the list and no doubt can never be trusted.

None of these people should be let out of the boss’ sight but you have the opportunity to show how the future will look when trust is given.