Corporations should enable their employees to work from home easily by making social networking tools and other applications more widely available.
Diane Morello, a vice-president at research firm Gartner, said that "user pressure" for such applications should be responded to, with the biggest benefit to those wanting to work from home.
"Corporates should respond to user pressure for presence-aware applications, social networking tools and wikis to support flexible working," said Ms Morello, according to Telappliant.
She suggested that those firms that do not embrace flexible working practices in this way may find themselves losing valuable staff members or struggling with recruitment in the future.
Last week it was revealed that high-growth businesses in the UK are more likely to have flexible working practices in place than slower-growth firms, according to figures from Dynamic Markets compiled on behalf of Cisco.
Nick Watson, vice president for enterprise business for Cisco in the UK and Ireland, said that IT can provide a "platform" for such working practices to develop.
