More that 1.5 million employees benefit from remote and flexible working, study reveals

Remote and flexible working management systems will become an increasingly important tool for managers in the near future, as more and more employees opt to work from home – in fact, their total numbers has passed 1.5 million, according to recent research.

The study from TUC found that 1.52 million employees classed themselves as working from home in 2015, up 241,000 (19 per cent) on 2005 figures, with millions more regularly or occasionally following suit.

Almost two-thirds of habitual home workers were in their forties and fifties, with IT, agriculture and construction the most frequently cited sectors. The south west and the east of England saw the highest penetration of home working, with Northern Ireland lagging behind – just one in 48 employees there regularly worked from home.

When the self-employed and other members of the labour market are included, the total number of those working from home reached more than four million, up by more than half a million since 2007.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said there was still scepticism about the practice in many quarters.

“Many employers still don’t trust their staff to work from home and force them to make unnecessary time-consuming trips into the office so they can keep an eye on them,” she said. “Employers need to take a more enlightened approach to home working as it can benefit business, the workforce and the wider economy.”

Tensor Mobile Self Service Module – the perfect solution for remote working management

Designed as a mobile extension of the Tensor.NET Time and Attendance System, the Mobile Self Service Module allows iPhone owners to Clock IN and OUT at their respective workplaces, as well as requesting a period of absence, viewing remaining leave entitlements, recent clocking history and current flexitime balance.

Additionally, mobile users will be able to easily book ON or OFF production jobs, and also receive notifications when requests are approved or rejected.

On the other hand, supervisors will be able to easily subordinate work colleague’s time sheets and approve or deny their absence requests. The management of requests is made easy with the aid of a consolidated calendar showing the absence of all subordinate employees.

Given its mobile nature, the remote workers module application also offers a special provision to mitigate the possible connectivity losses, by storing all of the requests on the iPhone and transferring them immediately after a network connection is re-established.

Mobile clockings and job bookings, once submitted, are transferred to the central Tensor.NET application. Additionally, the employee’s geographical position is also ascertained from their iPhone’s location and the employee’s movements recorded in this manner are plotted on a map viewable in the Tensor.NET (which is a particularly useful features for field personnel).

If you’d like to find out more about the Tensor Mobile Self Service Module and its functionality, just contact our dedicated product team or Book a Demo, one of our representatives will be more than happy to provide you with all the necessary information.