A new poll has discovered that the gap between the intention to provide working-from-home options and actually providing them is large.

HR website polled 1,200 small and medium sized businesses and found that 61 per cent of employees rarely or never work from home. This is despite the majority of those businesses claiming to have flexible working options.

Some 55 per cent of business owners polled said they could not see that working from home could increase productivity. This is despite evidence that working from home can help people concentrate on thought-intensive tasks, away from the distractions of the office environment.

Over 80 per cent of the employees polled said they would be productive if working from home and 24 per cent said they worked from home more last year than they did the year before. This is good news for flexible working advocates and if the trend continues, all SME employees could be working from home at least part of the time within the next five years.

Currently, 33 per cent of the employees questioned said they could do all or most of their work from home.