Home working secretaries proving popular

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are more open to allowing secretarial and administration staff to work from outside the office due to technological advances, it has been suggested.

In recent years, the expansion of virtual private networks, wireless broadband connections and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) networks has meant that companies have more options as to where they place their non-essential staff.

According to Richard Phillips of internet-based transcriptions service Outsec, this has resulted in a rapid growth in freelance outsourcing of secretarial work.

"The outsourcing industry for secretarial work is exploding at the moment," he told the Guardian.

"They can work from home, determine their own working practices and have a huge amount of control over what they're doing."

By using an IP PBX, secretaries can receive calls on their computer or VoIP-enabled phone at home and patch calls through to other employees either in the office or away from their desk.

While this clearly adds flexibility to the office communications network, theer are further advantages to home working, such as increased employee happiness, more free office space and a smaller carbon footprint through less worker commuting.