The survey, conducted with workers aged 18 and over, from a wide range of industry sectors, who use IT and electronic devices as part of their day-to-day work, revealed that half of UK workers work from home less than once a month, with over one third (36%) of workers that never do. This is despite the fact that over three quarters (76%) of companies have a remote working policy in place, according to a separate survey conducted by Phoenix with 100 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and IT decision-makers (ITDM) across the UK and from a range of different industry sectors. The CIO and ITDM survey also underlined the slower rate of adoption of remote working, with 62% of participants responding that just 30% or less of its company’s employees work remotely more than once a week and 91% of CIOs and ITDMs said that 30% or less of those employees work from home full time.
Alistair Blaxill, Managing Director of Phoenix’s Partner Business, said: “Remote working is often seen as a key ingredient of the successful business of the future but currently the reality is very different. Many companies have put remote working policies in place but that does not always mean it leads to adoption. Companies’ intentions of increasing remote working is sometimes not being fully realised because the legacy infrastructure and IT support base is not as developed as it needs to be to implement it.
“We believe it is vitally important for businesses to address this in the future as mobility is seen as one of the most significant driving forces for the IT sector and an increasing number of workers will expect to be fully connected to work all of the time.”