New YouGov Omnibus research, conducted on behalf of Redcentric, reveals just under a third of UK office workers reported an increase in productivity when working outside of the workplace.
The managed services provider commissioned the survey of over 2,000 UK adults to discover the attitudes of both employers and employees towards home working.
The research found that 54% of UK office workers are currently able to work remotely, with 30% feeling that their productivity increased when they work away from the office and only 17% stating that remote working reduced their efficiency.
In terms of attitudes, an overwhelming 70% of office workers said that it is important for businesses to allow their employees to work remotely, while only 22% believed that this flexibility is unimportant.
However, 48% of respondents claimed that their employers didn't allow them to work remotely, with 23% saying that their business simply didn't like them doing it, potentially for reason such as data privacy and loss of productivity. Just over one in ten (12%) stated that their business' IT systems weren't modern enough to facilitate remote working.
Phil Dyson, Product Group Manager of Voice & Unified Communications from Redcentric said: "Home-working can bring real benefits to almost any organisation. It not only provides flexible working arrangements for employees who need them, it also allows businesses to recruit people from any location.
Thanks to modern voice and unified communications services, gone are the days of home-workers being restricted to a landline or mobile phone. Today people get the same features and functionality at home as if they were in the office, even extending to call centre staff. Features like instant messaging, presence, video and online collaboration make location irrelevant, and with modern services working over home broadband, they're really cost-effective too.
With cloud and Internet delivered communications, cost, complexity and technology should no longer be limiting factors in deploying home-working services which, as our research indicates, can offer many benefits to both the business and its staff alike."
