世論 What Japan Thinks

With the summer fast approaching, bringing with it the prospects of brownouts and blackouts due to a slight problem with a nuclear reactor or six, companies are looking at working from home as one way of reducing the load. The survey was conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Over the 23rd and 24th of May 2011 1,072 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 17.0% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

Of course, working at home doesn’t really save much electricity, and I strongly suspect it actually uses more, as the trains still have to run – I doubt if enough people are going to telelcommute to allow them to decrease the frequency – and each person at home will have their own air conditioner running whilst the office load will probably be barely reduced. About the only benefit I can think of is that if there is a major lack of power, it’s less inconvenient for those who are already home versus having to try to walk or cycle to the suburbs.

Research results

Of the sample, 47.4%, or 508 people, worked outside the home in either the public or private sector. They were the target of the following questions.

Q1: Does your employer have a work at home policy? (Sample size=508)

Yes	8.3%
No, but plan to introduce soon	0.8%
No, but currently investigating	4.7%
No, don’t know	86.2%

When a similar question was asked by a different research company back in November of 2007, 13.0% of the employed sample worked at places with work at home systems, so things have barely changed in the last three and a half years.

When asked about what problems people saw with work at home, the top answer was the difficulty with communicating with the office, then not having the right equipment at home, and problems regulating their own working hours.

Q2: What do you think are the benefits of working from home? (Sample size=508, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
No commute time	407	80.1%
Can on the whole decide my own work schedule	360	70.9%
Don’t need to worry about what I wear	293	57.7%
More time to spend with my family, spend by myself	273	53.7%
Don’t need to worry about boss, colleagues, underlings watching me	219	43.1%
Other	6	1.2%
No particular benefits	23	4.5%