Leader: Mobile working - use it in moderation

This publication has said much about the downsides of mobile working, including pointing out mobile and remote workers often work longer hours than those in the office and underscoring the importance of the downtime that's often lost when a person is reachable during evenings and weekends.

Two additional drawbacks have been revealed this past week. First, silicon.com's CIO Jury voted with a two-thirds majority that the wide range of mobile devices and platforms is a headache to manage across an enterprise - with some IT managers saying they ban such devices because they are a security risk.

Second, a recent study shows remote and mobile workers feel alienated and mistrusted, while a majority of respondents said they did not believe their company advocated mobile and flexible working.

While both of these bits of information cast a negative light on the 'always on' culture, we do not mean to condemn it outright.

Mobile working has its benefits, surely, such as increased productivity and flexibility for workers who can enjoy benefits such as avoiding long commutes or popping out to the doctor's or the bank during working hours because the boss can still contact them.

What's becoming more and more clear, though, is that it's no holy grail. People have talked about running 'virtual offices' in future with no central location. Instead colleagues work from home and on the road and rarely see each other in person.

This has proved possible in certain situations but it's not the future of business - and not only because mobile devices are hard to manage. Business is by nature collaborative and the more communications technologies advance, the more we're coming to appreciate just how good the face-to-face paradigm is.

The answer is balance. Most businesses will keep the office space and maintain teams working in one location as much as possible while allowing those workers who know and see each other regularly to take advantage of mobile working on a sporadic basis.

This point was well put by an anonymous reader commenting on a recent silicon.com poll, which showed less than 15 per cent of people want to work 'always on the move'.

The problem, the reader put forth, was the word 'always'.

"The key benefit of mobility is not based on a binary decision to 'work on the move' or not," he wrote. "Having the option and ability to occasionally 'work on the move' is the key. The technology allows for flexible choice of where we work - this is what gives the productivity benefits."

We agree.