It's National Work from Home Day, so you have semi-official permission to stay in your pyjamas, at the kitchen table, laptop sandwiched between the Coco Pops and the orange juice.
An estimated five million workers across the UK will not have gone into the office today. We're hoping that with fewer commuters, the roads are clearer and public transport less crowded than usual. Stress levels have fallen, pollution levels are down and CO2 emissions reduced. People are happier, have a better work-life balance and ultimately will be healthier.
According to the TUC's general secretary, Brendan Barber, "Being able to work from home every now and again is a sensible move for individuals and their employers. Smart employers know this already. Now it's time for the rest to wake up to the benefits of flexible working."
National Work from Home Day aims to allow people the opportunity to demonstrate that without the stress induced by the workplace environment, with the often long commute many have to endure, people can be even more productive by regularly, or even occasionally, working from home.
The RAC Foundation, a supporting partner of Work Wise UK, calculates that 25 million people in the UK commute to and from a fixed place of work, of which 18 million people go by car and seven million by other means. The Eddington Report predicted that if recent trends continue, by 2025, congestion will waste around £22 billion worth of time in England alone.
"It would not take much to see a real impact," says Phil Flaxton, chief executive of Work Wise UK. "Even if staff worked only an average of one day every two weeks at home, this would result in ten per cent less people commuting and travelling. Think of the impact that would have on our roads, trains and buses.
The savings in commuter travel by BT homeworkers is over 20 million miles per year. This is a conservative estimate based on each commuter avoiding 100 commutes a year of a round trip of 15 miles.
Nearly 3.5 million people already work from home in the UK - 12.2 per cent or one-in-eight of the working population - an increase of 600,000 since 1997. Many organisations already benefit from the cost saving and increased productivity benefits that smarter working brings.
The highest proportion of home workers is in the South West with 15.7 per cent, followed by Eastern England with 14.4 per cent. The lowest is in the North East with 9.3 per cent, followed by Scotland with 9.4 per cent.
Home working is one of the smarter working practices being promoted through the Work Wise UK campaign, which is entering its third year. Others include flexible working, such as condensed hours and nine-day fortnights, mobile and remote working. Apart from benefiting from more productive staff, employers will save costs as the infrastructure required to support a smarter working workforce is less than a traditional one.
