Longest commute in Europe ?

[peterjhale]

The benefits of working from home are being highlighted as UK employees face the longest commute in Europe.

New research by telecoms giant Samsung reveals that commuters in the UK spend as much as 47 days per year travelling to and from their place of work.

The research questioned almost 700 senior executives in businesses across Europe and concluded that Brits had it the worst with seven hours per week on the commute, the equivalent of one extra working day.





This is almost double the time spent by Swedish workers who spend less than four hours per week commuting to work.

Londoners have the hardest journeys, with the average worker spending eight hours per week commuting.

This is in stark contrast to workers in Birmingham who face a less stressful 4 ½ hours per week.

Andrew Saunders, Samsung's Head of Product Marketing, said, “As the figures show, employees in the UK are spending far too much additional time getting to their place of work.

“It’s a huge issue, not only for the individuals adding much more time onto their working lives, but we could also suggest that a high proportion of these people will spend this extra time in their cars, which isn’t helping our growing congestion problems.”

At a time when the government is proposing more congestion charging as well as the construction of toll roads, Samsung argue that more should be done to encourage business to be carried out from home.

Around 88 per cent of respondents agree that more of an emphasis upon working from home would help raise employee performance.

“In offering facilities to enable employees to work from home, UK businesses can address the problem.”, added Saunders.

“We have the technology to do it, we just need to trust employees.”

When asked what they would rather be doing with their time than commuting for so long, the most popular responses were spending time with their family as well as, more predictably, catching up on sleep.

[inbakumar]

As a Londoner who has been commuting to the City for nearly 15 years, I understand the issues well. However, I have learnt to utilise the commuting time better by reading or preparing for meetings. The travelling time also gives me additional time to think about various issues.

Moreover, working from home is not a simple solution as one thinks. Certainly, the people I know of and I work longer hours when working from home. It is difficult to switch-off because there is always more work to do .

I would very much like to know what other forum members think about this subject.

Regards,

[peterjhale]

When I travelled into London it was either on a packed and smelly tube train or a packed and smelly regular train. I couldnt get anything done except to read the paper.

I work from home now and go into the office when required.

Positives are that I dont have the daily commute

Negatives are losing the daily interaction from the people at work

[james]

I'm a home boy as well and loving every minute of it but the negatives are as Peter says above

[peterjhale]

yep - good times and bad time - hey ho