Environmental Leader

UK employees name office culture as the main culprit for the slow adoption of remote working and green practices, research from Interwise, a company that sells remote working tools, finds.

Thirty percent of all respondents said that corporate culture was the barrier to their employers’ adoption of remote working practices and 25 percent also cited the same reason for slow adoption of green initiatives.

“Companies which do not embrace remote working will find it difficult to recruit and retain staff,” Gartner vice-president and fellow Diane Morello said. “Corporates should respond to user pressure for presence-aware applications, social networking tools and wikis to support flexible working. IT organizations that attempt to shut down those tools for security and policy reasons alone will do so at the expense of their relevance and value.”

Other reason for slow uptake of remote working cited were lack of enabling technologies adopted in the work environment, reluctance to give up face-to-face social interaction and management distrust of remote workers. Only half of all employees said they were equipped to work remotely, despite their views that over half of the meetings they travel to, do not need to be in-person.