Some companies are enabling their employees to work from home in order to keep costs down, it has been suggested.

Node4, a communications and computing specialist, has suggested that businesses are moving away from town centres in order to keep their costs down. To keep things moving, they are allowing their employees to work remotely, from home or at a place of their choosing.

Graham Peck, technical manager with the firm, commented: "Businesses who have previously wanted to allow their staff to work more flexibly in order to boost productivity now have the tools to do so. And as more people resent paying over the odds for their business accommodation, they now have the incentive to pursue ways of helping staff to migrate to remote working."

He explained that cloud computing is a major driver of the trend, noting that it is a scalable service that should allow companies to increase or decrease the number of homeworkers they have as required.

Mr Peck, however, added that switching to remote working is best done in a phased process. This helps to ensure that people have everything they need to work from home and that they keep in touch with what is going on in the office space.