ABSTRACT

Remote and mobile workers (RMW) are individuals who spend most of their working time away from a home or office base; they have also been described as nomadic or mobile teleworkers, multi-locational e-workers and dispersed technical workforces (Huuhtanen, 2005, Huws and O’Regan, 2001, Jacobs, 2004, Kurland and Bailey, 1999). In this study RMW were defined as individuals who have fewer than 4 hours face-to-face contact time with their manager or colleagues each week. Within the EU it was predicted that in 2010 there would be 14 million RMW across EU-15, and an estimated 1 million RMW in the UK and Ireland (Bates and Huws, 2002). The majority of individuals working this way are involved in customer service work, software development, human resources, management or training (Bates and Huws, 2002).