Remote working is on the rise in Britain, with 45 per cent of employees now spending at least some of the working week doing jobs from home, according to research from Regus. However, of these homeworkers, 32 per cent have said that the temptation to snack more or not get up and leave the house on days when they are working from home means they fear getting fat.

Based on the views of 4,000 professionals, the Regus survey highlighted the need to remain focused and disciplined while working away from the office. In particular, when you have a well-stocked kitchen in your home, it can prove difficult to avoid the temptation of raiding the fridge more – something that is not typically an option when working from an office.

Richard Morris, UK CEO at Regus, commented: "Working from home makes it easy to reach for a doughnut whilst still in your pyjamas. This look is not so popular in a workspace surrounded by professional peers."

Homeworkers should ensure they stick to a healthy diet and regular meals when they are not in the office. They can also use the extra time that they are not spending on their commute to exercise, which can provide a boost to their productivity.

According to a survey of 700 mothers with children under the age of 10 by the insurance company Direct Line, nearly two thirds (65 per cent) claimed that they would consider running a business from their own home to make the family unit better off. Dubbed 'mumpreneurs', the shift to give up the office job to instead work from home comes in response to rising childcare costs that mean it is no longer feasible to leave children in the care of other people.

Recent figures have suggested that the cost of putting two children through full-time childcare for a year is £11,700. The expense negated the financial benefits of working an office job, according to the mothers questioned; almost half (49 per cent) said they believed they would be better off financially to start a business from home and save on childcare fees.

The website findababysitter.com has stated that the cost of childcare went up by 19 per cent in the 12 months to December 2013, with the cost of hiring a nanny witnessing the steepest rise at 25 per cent – rising from an average of £6.59 an hour to £8.75 an hour.

Taking on freelance work that enables the mothers to remain at home with their young children, or starting their own business out of the home have been cited as popular alternatives to tackle the problem.

Specifically, the findings from the ONS’s most recent attempt to measure national well-being reveal that the thing that workers dislike most is commuting to the office. Train journey times of 60 to 90 minutes were a cause of grief for many of the people surveyed while bus journeys were said to be even more painstaking.

The results have come from the ONS’s ‘Commuting and Personal Well-being, 2014’ report that was published last month. It points out that the disgruntled life of commuters has been exacerbated by the ongoing problems caused by 2014’s heavy rains as floods, landslips, storms and fallen trees, which continuously disrupted roads and transport services.

This is the major factor behind a rise in the number of people exploring the possibility of working from – evidenced by the fact that house searchers are focusing on reliable Internet connections and additional space for work areas.

Figures show that there are somewhere in the region of four million people in Britain working from home, 10 per cent of the country’s total workforce. This number has been increasing as the consumerisation of technology has delivered faster and more reliable services to people’s homes, allowing them to perform business tasks without having to leave their sofa.

Now, the ONS has suggested, this figure looks set to rise further as sections of the workforce look to escape the laborious task of just getting to the office itself.

A survey commissioned to help support the launch of the Work and Family Show, which began in London last week, saw researchers survey 1,000 parents from the databases of My Family Care and the Baby Show. It focused on the struggles of finding the right balance between their work and personal lives, with the option to work from home emerging as a potential solution for those who felt the former dominated the latter.

The study found that a fifth of men wished to stay at home rather than going back to work. However, a third of the men said that their employers offered them no flexibility in the time they could take for paternity leave.

Furthermore, the research also discovered that 80 per cent of women felt “guilty” about returning to work after having a child. The new mothers also stated that they were worried about having to leave their children in the care of others.

Much of the survey focused around the difficulty parents experience in finding the right balance between their work and personal lives.

Ben Black, director of My Family Care, the organisation responsible for the survey, said: “Today, over 2.2 million parents are not working in order to look after their family. However, more than 60 per cent are looking to return to work but do not know how to, or are scared of how they will manage to look after their children and focus on work.”

The findings of the study suggest that more flexible solutions need to be provided so that a happy medium can be found for those wishing to continue to work without having to abandon large aspects of their private life or be away from their newborns.

The option to work from home is one such solution that could allow fathers and mothers alike with the option to perform some or all of their usual work tasks without having to leave their child with someone else.

With a number of lines closed and service dramatically reduced on the remaining open lines commuters in central London were forced to consider their alternatives.

Working from home proved to be a popular option for many, with employers that previously hadn't considered it as an option forced to give it a try. In many cases, it proved fruitful, with productivity and working hours actually increasing when people didn't have to spend time travelling. In fact, figures from The Huffington Post suggested that the average worker will save an average of 77 minutes a day by not facing the commute.

In addition to allowing people to work from home, businesses also implemented flexible working hours, allowing people to miss the rush hour crush on the reduced service tubes.

The benefits of such systems have been seen across the world, with surveys from Ipsos MORI, Regus and others previously demonstrating increases in engagement and productivity when flexible working practices are employed.

Unions are planning a further strike next week from February 11th to the 14th.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that 52 per cent of the UK's small business population and eight per cent of the total workforce run enterprises from their home. This equates to around 2.5 million home business owners around the country.

Head of Direct Line for Business, Jazz Gakhal, commented on the data: “Self-employment has been on the rise for several years and our research now shows that a great number of these people work for themselves from home.”

Direct Line for Business compiled the study, which also showed that men are more than twice as likely as women to start up a company in their home, with around 1.7 million male home business owners and just 818,000 female ones.

The study also found that this style of working had different levels of popularity depending on location. Herefordshire was shown to have the highest percentage of people running a business from home with 27 per cent of its 92,000 total workforce running a home company. This compared to just nine per cent in London, although numbers in the capital were high with 32,800 running home businesses in the Wandsworth borough alone.

Steve Beahan, a partner at law firm Irwin Mitchell, told the Financial Times that people need to be careful that they take in to account all of the legal responsibilities associated with running a business from home, which can sometimes be forgotten.

Conducted by video conferencing service provider UCi2i, the research polled 1,000 office employees in the UK and found that those with a flexible working environment are more likely to put in extra time on the job.

The survey also showed that some offices have problems with the disconnect that exists between home workers and office workers. It found that one in four people based in the office believe that those working from home are somehow 'cheating the system'. Furthermore, 84 per cent said that they didn't like not working alongside their colleagues, highlighting the importance of clear communication when people are working from different locations.

Michael Grant, managing director of UCi2i, commented: "These results highlight the need for companies, across all sectors, to seriously consider investing in video conferencing that support flexible working and allow instant face-to-face communication among colleagues, customers and partners at any time, wherever they are.

"Investing in easy-to-use software and encouraging employees to work from home can significantly improve businesses productivity and profit."

Katy Cowan, founder of Creative Boom, a website for creative professionals, has stated that it can be easy for contractors to lose control of the balance. Administrative tasks and marketing can build up on top of workloads, blurring the lines between downtime and work.

But a few simple precautions can help prevent this from happening. Work schedules, for example, can prove to be invaluable, while separating work and personal phones and email systems can also help avoid getting stressed over work problems out of hours.

Cowan stated: “When you freelance or run your own business, work can take over everything. Especially if you work from home.

“But you'd be surprised how easy it is to gain back control and separate home and work life.”

Conducted by the TUC, the study was published to mark National Work From Home Day on May 17th, an event organised by WorkWise UK.

In addition to finding that the number of people who work from home has risen, the analysis also looked into the break down of who works from home. It found that 65 per cent of homeworkers are male, although an increasing number of women are looking into it as an option. In fact, the majority of home jobs created in the past five years have been taken by women.

Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC, commented on the data: “The recession may have fuelled rising unemployment and put pressure on flexible working practices, but homeworking has continued to thrive and grow.

“Over four million people usually work from home, while many millions more occasionally do so. The sheer scale of homeworking proves how easily it can be done but there are still too many employers who are reluctant to allow staff to work away from the office or the shop floor.”

She added that there are challenges to implementing flexible working but that smart employment relations can usually provide an intelligent answer that suits both the employer and the worker.

Conducted by Ask.com in conjunction with Harris Interactive, the study found that 86 per cent of US office workers are most productive when they are on their own.

The study highlighted the range of problems in the office that people find particularly irritating. The most commonly cited distraction, with 61 per cent, was noisy coworkers. This was followed by social events (19 per cent), such as birthday celebrations and lunches.

However, people are also lead off-task by 'water cooler talk', which was listed by 19 per cent of workers, and messy workspaces, listed by 17 per cent of workers.

Lisa Ross, vice-president of human resources at Ask.com, commented: “This research gives us broader context when thinking about the workplace culture we're trying to foster.”

She added that the study revealed that working from home does not necessarily suit everyone. The study found that 29 per cent of respondents indicated a preference for working form home, compared to 63 per cent of employees who would prefer to have a focused work space in an office building.