Employers could boost morale in the workplace, hold onto staff for longer and improve productivity if they became more responsive to requests from employees to work from home, according to research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
The quarterly CIPD/KPMG labour market outlook survey of UK employers found that two-thirds (69%) of employers never or occasionally accepted requests to work from home.
This was despite the fact that 30% of those companies that do offer homeworking believe staff are more productive at home and only 8% think they are less productive. The remainder believes there is no impact on productivity.
Two in five (39%) organisations surveyed said attitudes of senior management towards homeworking had changed positively in the last five years. But half believed they had not changed and 6% thought senior managers had become more negative towards it.
But there are signs that homeworking could become more common in the next year, with a quarter of employers saying that they intend to increase the amount of requests they grant.
"Employers should be more accommodating about accepting requests to work from home, rather than fostering a culture of presenteeism," said Gerwyn Davies, policy adviser at the CIPD.
"The allure of homeworking for employees is becoming greater given the stress and rising costs associated with commuting.
"Employers and line managers should have more confidence in their staff, policies and in their own management capability to ensure that they recruit, retain and make the best use of the talent they have."
The main motivations given by employers for introducing such a policy are to increase organisational flexibility (68%), retain workforce and widen the talent pool (55%) and meet employee demand (54%).
About a quarter (23%) of employers say tax or NIC exemptions from IT facilities would act as an incentive to increase homeworking opportunities among employees.
The most common type of arrangement is flexible working for parents of young children, the report found, offered by 61% of companies. Over half (56%) claim to offer homeworking to at least some individuals.
"While a substantial majority of employers report having recruitment difficulties, a substantial minority accept requests from their workers to work from home," added Davies.
"Inflexible approaches to homeworking risk restricting the competitiveness and growth of UK organisations if employer and managerial mindsets do not change."
