BT replies:
The most important thing about homeworking is that your employees are able to work effectively from home. That typically means ensuring that they have not only adequate technology – a dedicated business line and a PC should be sufficient – but that they are able to work in ‘office conditions’. This means that there should be an area of their home that is quiet during working hours – you may need to consider auditing employee homes in some way to establish this.

The other aspect of effective working is to ensure that people do not become isolated from their colleagues and thus miss out on more informal team-building and knowledge-sharing activities. You will need to ensure that your team is still meeting together physically and virtually to do this.

Flexible working will confer many benefits – particularly improving responsiveness, and you could save on accommodation costs – but to realise them it is important to focus on what makes your employees effective rather than looking solely at the cost of implementation.