Silent Pendolino carriage is reserved for telecommuters

Mia Kauhanen, who travels daily from Helsinki to Tampere and back, spends five hours a day in commuting

Mia Kauhanen

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By Heli Saavalainen
     
      The carriage, with a quota of seats set aside for teleworking passengers, on this Pendolino train running between Helsinki and Tampere is rapidly filling up with telecommuters.
      When the train arrives five minutes later in Pasila, there are only a few seats available, as the holders of monthly tickets have effectively filled up all vacant seats.
      After taking a seat they bring out their laptops, start to charge their mobile phones, and put earphones in, and - silence reigns.
      There is no noise in this carriage.
     
Tampere resident Mia Kauhanen, 41, boards the train in Pasila, managing to clear a bit of space for herself and her laptop.
      Her trip is partly working time, for which she gets paid.
      ”I am allowed to count a total of 90 minutes of the work I do on the train every day as working time”, Kauhanen reports.
      Most of her time on the train she spends reading and writing email messages and reports, but the wireless network gets overloaded fast.
      ”Occasionally it can be painfully slow”, Kauhanen complains.
     
Working for a finance company as a development manager, Kauhanen has been commuting between Tampere and Helsinki for three years.
      According to her employment contract, Kauhanen is allowed to do telework a minimum of 7.5 hours every week, but she would like to telework more than just the 90 minutes each day.
      ”My employer has a positive attitude towards telecommuting. However, it depends on the specific tasks and on my superior how often I can stay at home. In the opinion of some of my colleagues, everyone should work at the office”, Kauhanen notes.
      It takes Kauhanen a total of five hours every day to travel between home and work, as in Tampere she also has to travel by bus for another hour. It is hard going, as Kauhanen has a four-year-old child at home.
      ”My husband is put in a difficult situation at home, when I am either on the train or waiting for a train that is late”, Kauhanen says.
     
One can do a commute like this, if his or her work is motivating and if superiors and colleagues support teleworking.
      ”If this is not the case, soon it will no longer make any sense. Teleworking will become stressful, if an employee has a guilty conscience about it or has to explain constantly that he or she would not like to start meetings as early as at 8:00 am ,or would like to finish already at 4:00 pm”, Kauhanen continues.
      ”It can cause disputes, hidden jealousy, and even workplace bullying”, Kauhanen notes.
      For example, meetings can be scheduled for designated telework days accidentally-on-purpose.
      ”Then they might ask whether or not these tasks can be performed as telework”, Kauhanen adds.
     
Kauhanen became a teleworker with a long way to work more or less by chance.
      ”We moved to Tampere while I was on maternity leave. I thought I'd give it a go, and it was many years ago”, Kauhanen notes.
      In fact, Kauhanen would like to do even more telework at home, as her tasks are not confined to any specific place.
      Kauhanen concludes by saying: ”Often the recovery time after work remains too short, and sometimes even the weekend does not seem to be enough. If there are then weeks without any telework days or only one day per week, I feel it in my general level of alertness and so on. Two or three teleworking days per week could ensure that I would not become too tired and stressed out."
     
There are also other people who feel exhausted in the carriage.
      Towards the end of the trip, many passengers are sleeping, listening to music, or just trying to relax.
      Most of the permanent commuters know each other at least by sight.
      Yet there are unwritten rules, saying that in a carriage with a quota of seats for teleworkers, nobody is allowed to chatter or to peek at other people’s laptops.
      Babblers are scowled at from under furrowed brows, and they have to move over to the restaurant car.
      There, too, every second passenger has a laptop parked in front of them.
     
     
Friday, September 16th was National Telework Day in Finland.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 16.9.2011


Previously in HS International Edition:
  One in six Finns does teleworking at least occasionally (13.9.2011)

Links:
  VR, Finnish Railways: Onboard Services

HELI SAAVALAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
heli.saavalainen@hs.fi