'Office culture' slowing remote working take-up

An engrained 'office culture' is holding up moves by UK businesses towards remote working and other green practices, according to a study.

Thirty per cent of employees said in a poll by web communications provider Interwise that managers were unwilling to upset the office status quo by allowing employees to work from home using VoIP and other web conferencing technologies to keep employees in contact.

This environmentally-friendly initiative would save on carbon emissions from workers travelling into the office, but respondents said the same corporate culture slowed down the adoption of many green initiatives.

"Culture could be the most difficult of all barriers to overcome, beyond technology or cost," said Tony Gasson, a vice-president for Interwise.

"If business managers are not ready to lead a cultural shift, then technology can help them with positive, reassuring results."

Diane Morello, a vice-president at technology research firm Gartner, agreed with the results of the survey, saying: "Companies which do not embrace remote working will find it difficult to recruit and retain staff.

"Corporates should respond to user pressure for presence-aware applications, social networking tools and wikis to support flexible working. IT organisations that attempt to shut down those tools for security and policy reasons alone will do so at the expense of their relevance and value."