South: New report suggests greater productivity of home workers
A study of 1,096 British workers, including some who work from home and some who work at the office, carried out by CartridgePeople.com in its SOHO (Small-Office/Home-Office) Workers Report, revealed that 57% believe they manage to get more work done when they are based at home, compared to when they are at their place of work.
Only 5% of workers report that working from home has a negative effect on their productivity, and only 12% feel they are more easily distracted at home.
Home working is championed by business leaders including Virgin’s Richard Branson, and it is offered by many leading companies including Amazon, Dell, Apple and Salesforce. 30.5% of UK employees work from home every day, while 14% do so every week. In addition, 38% of workers indicate that they work at home outside of office hours, 22% doing so in the evening and 18% at the weekend.
Research by Virgin Media Business estimates that these figures are set to drastically increase – with the proportion of home workers set to increase to 60% of the workforce over the next decade. This prediction was echoed by a survey of business leaders at the Global Leadership Summit in London, which found 34% said more than half of their business’ full-time workers would be working remotely by 2020.
Andrew Davies, spokesperson for CartridgePeople.com, commented: “When people think about home working, it is easy to assume wrongly that home workers spend their days getting easily distracted or procrastinating by watching TV or chatting to family members. This data suggests that the opposite is true. At home there is not the temptation to join in on tea rounds or to have unnecessary meetings with colleagues."
The south of England and the Midlands are currently leading the way for home working in the UK, with just one northern city, Manchester, among the top-five home-working capitals of the UK, and only Newcastle and Leeds in the top 10.
