National Work From Home Day

This Thursday (May 15) is National Work from Home Day when up to five million workers are expected to work from home across the UK, according to the not-for-profit Work Wise UK which helps organisations wanting to adopt smarter working practices. Nearly 3.5 million people already work from home in the UK, an increase of 600,000 since 1997. The highest proportion of home workers is in the South West with 15.7 per cent, followed by Eastern England with 14.4 per cent. The lowest is in the North East with 9.3 per cent, followed by Scotland with 9.4 per cent. “The benefits of working from home, even occasionally, are now widely accepted,” said Phil Flaxton, chief executive of Work Wise UK. “Not only does it reduce the amount of commuting people have to do, enhancing their work-life balance, but many are actually more productive. Although many organisations practise the age-old philosophy of ‘presenteeism’, they should open their eyes to the new work ethic spreading across the UK and try out home working: they may well be surprised.”

To celebrate, Shedworking will be repeating last year's highly popular experiment, giving readers regular updates throughout the day of exactly what's going on at Shedworking HQ. If you drop by on Thursday, please do say hello and perhaps include a little about where you're working. I'll also be Twittering about it (see right hand column) if you'd like to follow things that way (there'll be exclusive Twitter-only updates!).