Half of all European employers are using information and
communications technologies to perform work at a distance, according to
research by the Institute for Employment Studies.
It means that 27 million of the 55 million organisations in
Europe are already practising e-work.
The research also shows that 43 per cent of employers use
some form of e-outsourcing, importing business services from subcontractors.
One employer in 20 uses electronically linked subcontractors in another
country.
Of the 7,000 organisations surveyed as part of IES’s
Emergence project, 15 per cent have an outsourced call centre, and in two
thirds of these cases there is a direct telecommunications link to the main
office.
However, fully home-based teleworking by staff is still
comparatively rare.
