Working from home can offer a number of benefits to employees and companies through efficiency and time savings. However, there are a number of environmental benefits that are also worth considering.

Encouraging more employees to work from home reduces an office's carbon emissions. There is also the reduction in emissions from transport to be considered as workers no longer have a commute to go through, or at least they can opt to commute on a far more infrequent basis.

David Dunbar, general manager of BT's flexible working services division, spoke to BusinessGreen about the issue, explaining that flexible working is actually something that has been considered by most companies: “You usually have to really drill beyond the label to really find out what's going on. Almost every single company will have a flexible working policy and if you push them hard enough they might even remember which drawer it's in.”

Even some level of part-time home working can help to reduce a company's carbon footprint. For example, allowing a team to work from home every Friday could save on heating their office space for that period. Over time these savings can really add up for the environment and a firm's coffers.