Companies need to be fully aware of the IT implications when their employees are allowed, and nowadays even incentivised, to work from home.

There are plenty of studies available highlighting the benefits of employees working from home. From an employee perspective home-working can bring greater flexibility and quality of life by, for example, cutting down on arduous commutes; for the employer it can mean that work space can be cut back and overheads reduced; and naturally there is also the benefit to the environmental of reducing the number of people commuting to their place of work.

However, there are a number of issues to consider when a company decides to bring in home-working for its staff. One important issue to properly investigate, industry experts have advised, is IT. User support is never an easy task and this becomes even more onerous when computer users and the equipment to be supported are many miles from head office. This makes a simple desk-side visit to sort out a problem unfeasible. Companies also need to consider the level of equipment and connections that their employees will be using at home, as well as general data protection issues and file back-ups.

However, once these issues are properly considered and solutions reached, working from home need not bring IT strife for employees and businesses alike.