Member Article

Two third of employers refuse home working requests

More than two thirds of employers (69%) never or occasionally accept employee requests to work from home, the latest quarterly CIPD/KPMG Labour Market Outlook (LMO) survey revealed.

The survey shows that of the employers that do offer home-working, only 8% believe home-workers are less productive than their office-bound colleagues, while 30% say they are more productive. The remainder of employers say home-working makes no difference to productivity.

The same research reveals that home working requests are accepted more regularly in the public sector than the private sector - 35% of public sector organisations frequently accept requests, compared to 21% of private sector organisations. Only a tenth of employers (12%) say they never accept these requests and a fifth of organisations (19%) say they are more likely to accept requests from managers or professionals.

Gerwyn Davies, Policy Adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: “The slow increase in the take-up of home-working defies the evidence. While the cost of home-working has gone down, the cost of commuting has shot up. While a substantial majority of employers report having recruitment difficulties, a substantial minority accept requests from their workers to work from home. Inflexible approaches to home-working risk restricting the competitiveness and growth of UK organisations if employer and managerial mindsets do not change.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .