This document provides an overview of different working practices that have been impacted by information and communication technologies (ICT). It discusses several topics including home/teleworking, remote working, office-based working, videoconferencing, instant messaging, and faxing. For each topic, the document describes the technology used, how it has changed work patterns, examples of use cases, and key requirements. While teleworking and remote working have increased with new ICT devices, many companies still prefer office-based working for reasons like data security and employee isolation. Videoconferencing is now commonly used for meetings instead of travel, while instant messaging and phone conferencing allow real-time communication. Fax technology remains relevant for transmitting copies of

1. Company
LOGO
2.2 Working Practices
This section covers the use of ICT and how it has
changed patterns of working.

2. Topics to be learned:
1. Home working or teleworking
2. Remote working
3. Office-based working
4. Videoconferencing
5. Instant messaging
6. Faxing and Electronic Faxing

3. Home working / Teleworking
Teleworking is another name for working from home. When a person
“teleworks”, it means that some or all of the work they do is done at home
using modern technology.
Development in ICT devices and systems have made it easier for jobs that
used to be done in an office to be carried out at home.
The number of people working from home using ICT systems is increasing
year by year.
In 2005, 11% of the working population in Europe was working at home using
ICT. This varied from Finland with 29% to France and Spain, which both had 5
% of the workforce working from home.
New technology developments such as portable communication devices as
well as home computer systems and networks have enabled people to
become less tied to an office to do work.

4. Various Technologies
Wireless
Networks
Broadband
connection
Portable
Communication
Devices
Virtual
Private
Network
(VPN)
Personal
Digital
Assistant
(PDA)
Technologies
Teleworkers

5. Needs of a Teleworker
• Access to
E-mail
• A PC with
Internet access
• A landline
phone
• A mobile
phone • A printer/
photocopier
• A fax machine

6. Types of employment suitable for
teleworking
EmploymentServices
Professional services such as
tax advice, legal advice and
financial advice
Writing
Book editing
Proof reading of documents
and books
Technical and customer
support
Telesales and marketing

7. Personal traits of a Teleworker
Have good time management
skills.
Be well motivated.
Have good communication skills.
Have good self discipline.
Be able to meet deadlines.

8. Remote working
Teleworking or home working is a major aspect of remote
working, but there is another type. This is when people work at
a distance from the main office, for example travelling
salesmen, employees working in a temporary office, doctors on
call and engineers working on site.

9. Technologies that are used:
Technologies
PDAs or other
handheld computers
with wireless
networking
capability
Mobile telephones
Laptops with wireless
networking capability

10. Applications:
 Engineers on site can use a PDA to e-mail their reports. They are able to
view technical manuals relevant to their field of work and use
sophisticated database and word-processing software.
 Doctors can use laptops with wireless network capability connected to a
high-security VPN. They are able to access patient records, X-Rays, and so
on, whilst visiting patients in their home.
 Travelling salesmen who have to work away from their office can take
advantage of wireless hot-spots with their laptops and PDA. They can use
mobile phones to talk to their salesmen. They can also connect to their
main office using wireless connectivity through the hotel they are staying
at.
 For any of these groups of workers, remote access services (RAS) are
available. These allow them to access the desktop on their own PC when
they are away from home or the office.

11. Office-based working
Despite the tendency for the number of teleworkers to increase there are a
number of reasons why many companies retain their offices.
Some are based on what is best for the company and some are at the request
of the workers.
Many companies still think that if they allowed their employees to work at
home, many workers would spend the day watching television or taking part in
other non-productive activities.
There is also the feeling that data is not safe or confidential as employees if it is
being transmitted outside the company.
Many employees fear the prospect of isolation. They look forward to chatting
with their colleagues during their breaks.
A number of employees are also fearful for their jobs, feeling that if they are
out of the normal daily routine they might easier to lay off when the company
is looking to make redundancies.

12. Required Equipment:
Technologies
used
Desktop computers
connected to a LAN /
WAN.
Internet and e-
mail facilities
Networked
printers

13. Videoconferencing
A videoconference is the electronic equivalent to a conventional conference
usually held in a conference suite, sometimes called a face-to-face conference.
• Members of the conference need to log on to
the system of Internet and when the software is
running they can normally see and hear all the
delegates involved.
• The need to communicate by speaking in to the
microphone and looking at the webcam, which
is normally fixed to the top of the monitor.
• Conference members are able to examine
documents using normal software, discuss
modifications or additions to the documents and
physically making the amendments.

14. The essential components of a videoconference are:
 A standard PC with mouse and keyboard.
 A monitor
 Speakers
 A network connection (a broadband speed of at least a few
hundred Mbits per second is essential to ensure that the
quality of transmission is sufficient).
 A webcam.
 A microphone
 Videoconferencing software.
Essential Components

15. Videoconferencing is used in a wide variety of applications:
 In education, schools quite commonly use it to communicate
with other schools, particularly in remote locations.
 In medical applications, nurses and doctors can discuss cases
even though they might be a long way away from each other.
 Business use it quite often instead of face-to-face conferences,
and also for teleworkers to communicate with their base
office.
Practical Applications

16. When videoconferencing was initially introduced, there were
certain limitations:
 Poor quality of transmission due to the speed of Internet.
 Lack of technical skills on the part of the employees made it
difficult to communicate effectively.
Limitations

17.  These conferences can be held
using mobile telephones, landline
telephones or voice over the
Internet protocol (VOIP – the use
of phones connected through
computers to the Internet).
Types of videoconferencing
Videoconferencing
Individual
Group / Multiple
 In order for a phone conference to take place, at least 3 people must be
involved.
 Each participant has a personal identification number (PIN) that they key
into the phone after they have dialled the phone number for the
conference.
 The person who is organizing the conference is given two PINs by the phone
company. One is their personal PIN and the other is the participants’ PIN.
 The organizer then contacts all the people who are going to be involved in
the conference and tells them the participants’ PIN and the agreed time
and the time of the conference.

18.  This is the linking together of several people on a phone line so that they can
have a collective conversation. It is possible to hold these conferences using
mobile telephones, landline telephones or voice over the Internet protocol
(VOIP – the use of phones connected through computers to the Internet) but
each participant must have a touchtone phone.
 In order for a phone conference to take place, there must be at least three
people involved.
Phone conferencing

19.  Instant messaging is the exchange of text messages between two or more
people logged into a particular instant messaging (IM) service.
 It is an interactive service, as people can reply immediately to others logged
into the same system.
 It requires a user name (often an e-mail address) and a password. When
someone logs on for the first time they have to make a list of people they want
to contact- these individuals need to agree to be contacts. Then they select the
individual they want to talk to and send a message.
 If the contact happens to be online at the same time they can reply, leading to
a conversation. It is better than e-mail because messages are sent immediately,
whereas e-mail messages can be stored on a mail server for seconds or even
minutes.
Instant Messaging

20. THE IDEA FOR THE FAX MACHINE HAS BEEN
AROUND FOR 170 YEARS
We joke about the fax machine being ancient history—a relic of the late 20th
century and the dark ages before email attachments and cloud-based
storage—but it really is pretty old.
Fathers of Invention
The earliest facsimile (from the Latin fac simile, “make alike”) device was
invented in 1843 by Scotsman Alexander Bain. A clockmaker by trade, he
used clock parts to synchronize the movement of a transmitter and a
receiver for line-by-line "scanning" of messages and images. While Bain’s lab
experiments were promising, Englishman Frederick Bakewell beat him to the
patent office with his “image telegraph,” and Bain’s machine never took off.
Bakewell’s machine sent the first successful “telefax” transmission in 1847. It
could transmit handwritten words and simple drawings, but was of little use
beyond demonstrations at the the Great Exhibition in London in 1851
because of long transmission times and unreliable synchronization.
The first practical fax machine that saw sustained use was the pantelegraph,
built in the 1850s by Giovanni Caselli, an Italian priest, physicist, and
inventor (and a bit of a rabblerouser—while living in Modena as a tutor, he
participated in demonstrations demanding the annexation of Modena to
Piedmont and was tossed out by its duke).

21.  Fax is short for facsimile transmission.
 A fax machine is connected to a phone line. A document is scanned and then
transmitted through phone lines to another fax machine that then prints it out.
 It requires the use of a modem and so the speed of transmission tends to be
slow.
 It is used when exact copies of originals are required, although the quality of
the copy is sometimes not very good.
 Many organizations tend not to use fax machines as such but prefer to have
'all-in-one' printers. These are inkjet printers which have scanning and faxing
facilities built in to them.
Faxing

22. Although many uses of fax are being replaced by the use of e-mail and other
Internet services the fax is still used in a number of ways.
 In the U.K., signed documents are not considered to be legally acceptable when
sent by e-mail but they are acceptable when sent by fax.
 In the USA, weather maps are distributed by government bodies using fax.
 Many newspapers are prepared at a central location and then printed at a
number of printing plants. The publishers send copies of their newspapers by
fax to these plants using fax via satellite.
Uses of faxing

23.  Since the introduction of manual faxing a number of electronic systems have
been developed.
 For example, there are systems that use the Internet for faxing.
 Instead of printing our a document and faxing it using a fax machine, the user
'prints' the document directly to fax software, which uses the modem or
broadband to send the fax.
 The receiver either receives it on their fax machine or uses the same type of
software to convert it into a document for storage.
Electronic Faxing

24. Electronic faxing has the following advantages over traditional, manual faxing:
 It saves the time of going to the fax machine to retrieve or send faxes.
 Equipment costs are lower as there is no need for a fax machine.
 Running costs are lower as there is no need for a dedicated fax line.
 Confidential faxes are secure. On a manual fax. Any worker might pick up a fax
sent to someone else.
 It is not necessary to be in the office to receive faxes as they can be
downloaded remotely.
Benefits of Electronic Faxing

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