National Work from Home Day typically brings to an end Work Wise Week, which is a campaign to get the UK to realise the benefits of smarter working and now in its eighth year.

The TUC typically gets good publicity from Working From Home Day, with its now-traditional press release on the growing extent of homeworking reported in much of the national press and also on the TUC's own insightful and always interesting Touchstone blog (see here).

Frances O'Grady, TUC General Secretary, also has a guest blog on the Work Wise website. In the blog, she discusses the growth of homeworking while pointing out that demand far outstrips supply as a result of poor management and a slow response to the advances in technology which ameliorate the impact of the undoubted potential problem of isolation. Frances clearly believes that 'high-quality' homeworking brings many organisational and individual benefits while, from a trade union perspective, it also has much to say in terms of the 'good work' agenda.

What constitutes 'high quality'? In Frances's view, it is based on good terms and conditions of work, full organisational integration of homeworkers and fair and equal treatment for homeworkers in terms, for example, of promotion opportunities.

I wouldn't disagree with any of that but I think the key to making homeworking work is retaining a voluntary approach. Prospect has, for the reasons set out above, a highly positive approach to homeworking as part of the armoury of organisational tools to assist flexible working and, indeed, employee retention - but we recognise that, for some Prospect workers, voluntarism is not how their homeworking starts. If organisations want to empower and liberate their workers - and their productivity, to reflect a contemporary topic this week - then homeworking will only do so where individuals feel empowered.

This, it seems to me, is inextricably bound up with having a permissive, rather than a mandatory, management style as regards the workers involved. Where organisations put workers first, homeworking can bring benefits - but it is unlikely to do so where workers are confronted with little or no choice in the matter.