The global data storage and information security company employed Vanson Bourne to conduct the research for them and a total of 500 IT decision makers in UK and Germany were questioned as part of the study.

It was revealed that 96 per cent of the surveyed organisations allow remote or mobile working. Furthermore, 98 per cent said that they believe remote working is advantageous to their organisation.

Among the benefits seen by businesses was the fact that employee motivation is perceived to increase with the greater flexibility brought about by remote working. This was cited by 62 per cent of respondents.

Home working was the most common means of remote working, cited 62 per cent. Other methods deployed were bring your own device (51 per cent); virtual desktop infrastructure (46 per cent) and working from client sites (32 per cent).

Nick Banks, vice president of EMEA and APAC at Imation Corp's IronKey division, commented: “Whilst making remote working available to a larger number of employees has its benefits, the cost and risks associated still make it a difficult route for many organisations to tread.

“Businesses are unaware of the amount, and type, of data leaving the office, yet they are well aware that employees are regularly breaking the rules in order to take work home. Inadequate security, combined with the naivety surrounding the protection of corporate data, is putting organisations at risk of a data breach.”

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.

This is according to a recent article from Personnel Today. Writing for the website, Katie Richards states that one must consider the following: how a standard employment contract should be amended to encompass homeworking; issues relating to health and safety; and what can be done if a homeworking request is refused.

More than four million people in the UK work from home some or all of the time, the Office for National Statistics has said. Enabled by technological advances, it provides people the chance to improve their work-life balance, while also helping parents with young children maintain their careers.

In offering advice to people working from home, as well as employers wishing to enable their workforce to homework, Ms Richards says that there are several useful considerations. The first of these is to actually ensure that someone who is working from home still has the option of working in the company's offices – whether this is for meetings or on an ad hoc basis.

She also states: "An employer must agree with the employee what hours he or she will be available for work and to what extent those hours can be flexible. Both parties should be aware of the stipulations contained in the Working Time Regulations 1998 with regard to hours and breaks."

Expenses should also be discussed, the article explains. Travel costs, heating and telephone contracts are among things that an employer could contribute towards. Likewise a homeworker will require equipment if they are to work remotely – they can speak to their employers about helping cover these costs.

The company surveyed 5,000 UK directors and business owners and found that 60 per cent of all employees could be regularly working from home in seven years' time. It also found that almost three quarters (72 per cent) of business leaders feel that face-to-face meetings will soon become a thing of the past.

Virgin Media Business' research indicates a clear shift to a more mobile workforce that does not operate in the traditional manner of working from a desk and travelling to meet clients. Technological advances have made this possible while there is also a growing demand from workers to be allowed to work more flexibly, something that can help people strike the right work-life balance.

In article for HR Magazine, Narelle Morrison states: "Forget the misconception that flexible working is a benefit reserved only for the career mum. The working practice should be extended to all employees and discussed early on in the hiring process in order to attract and retain talent."

At present, just 6.2 per cent of advertised jobs say they allow flexible working, according to the Timewise Flexible Jobs Index. Ms Morrison urges companies to change this attitude and embrace homeworking as a means of boosting productivity and job satisfaction.

This is the view of CV-Library, which states that more ought to be done to allow and encourage workers to do their jobs from their homes. At present, just 6.9 million of the UK's 38 million workers work from home, and this is despite the rise in flexible and remote working tools.

However, if they were allowed to work from home, both the employee and the employer could stand to benefit; according to a survey by CV-Library, 84.3 per cent of home workers believe they are either as productive or more productive than their office-based colleagues. Furthermore, more than three quarters (77.4 per cent) of all workers believe that working from home has a positive impact on productivity within the business.

For the employees, working from home also presents them with the opportunity to avoid the stresses and strains of commuting to an office. Indeed, nearly 90 per cent of home workers said they find it easier to find a good work-life balance even though 65.8 per cent said they actually work longer hours when at home.

Lee Biggins, CV-Library's founder and managing director, commented on the findings: “Despite the increasing number of hours that British staff are working, productivity rates remain low in the UK, indicating that our approach to business and the working day needs to shift.

"Whilst home-working isn't suitable for all businesses, it can provide clear benefits to companies and employees alike. As long as employers manage their employees effectively and monitor productivity levels, it should be easy to determine which environment works best for staff, and ultimately, the company’s output.”

The salary and careers site, PayScale, joined with telecommuting job listings site FlexJobs to compile a list of the top 10 highest paying work from home jobs. They compared data on real-time FlexJobs listings with PayScale approximate top paid similar flexible positions.

The survey found that high paid roles including top senior executives were regularly flexible, in positions at companies deemed to be small-to-medium-sized (SME), holding less than 1,000 members of staff. These firms make up 99 per cent of the total organisations present.

The top 10 highest paid flexible job positions, as according to research into SME companies, are as follows.

1. Medical director – £132,000

2. Chief executive officer (CEO) – £120,000

3. Vice president of marketing – £99,000

4. Chief operations officer (COO) – £92,000

5. Regional vice president – £90,000

6. Chief financial officer (CFO) – £84,000

7. Government affairs director – £68,000

8. Director of business operations – £66,000

9. Senior business analyst – £55,000

10. Director of education – £41,000

CEO of FlexJobs Sara Sutton Fell said that these figures dispel the “common misconception that work-from-home jobs pay nowhere near traditional jobs”. The study found that pay in both at-home and office-based roles were not dissimilar.

Ms Sutton Fell added that recent changes allow for candidates to apply for positions in a wider local area than they would usually be able to. This opens them up to the added potential for higher wages and greater benefits.

PayScale’s director of analytics, Katie Bardaro, claimed that advances in technology has meant that companies are working and communicating with both staff and customers more regularly via email and video conference, for example. She added that this in turn means: “Telecommuting almost becomes standard in many higher-level positions.”

While the previous held benefits of working from home were well known – less commuting, more time to spend with family, environmental benefits, and a better work-to-life balance – this research shows that it is now the case that employees are not missing out on high wages when taking flexible work.

Under new legislation, which was introduced as of July 2014, any employee who has been working for a company for 26 weeks or more can ask for a range of flexible options, including compressed hours, four-day weeks, working from home and job shares. This right had previously been restricted to those with children or caring responsibilities.

The legal change will mean that 20 million people will now have flexible working rights, more than double the previous figure. Of those who already offer it, many businesses say working from home or changing working hours increases staff motivation and productivity while also reducing absence.

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills hopes it will modernise workplaces and bring them into line with demands for work-life balance. However, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) believes that formal change was not required; the organisation says that the move will create more administrative work whereas many smaller companies were already offering flexible working through a consensual approach.

There have also been concerns raised by groups such as Working Families around whether or not firms will approve the process. Some believe that there will be a reluctance to allow staff to work from home, with fears that it could create workplace tensions or that some employees could abuse the trust placed in them.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released figures this month showing that one in seven Britons are now working from home. In total there are 4.2 million people in the UK who work from home either full-time or occasionally – this accounts for 13.9 per cent of the entire workforce.

This is the highest proportion since records began in 1998. Around 1.5 million work from home on a permanent basis while nearly double that, 2.7 million, say that they use their home as an alternative to travelling into the office on an ad hoc basis.

However, despite this surge in home working, TUC states that there are still many bosses who do not trust or want their staff to work from their own homes. The group’s general secretary, Frances O'Grady, said: "Too many bosses still don't trust staff to work from home and instead force them to trudge into the office so they can keep an eye on them.

"Employers' attitudes to new working practices must change to make a much better use of modern technology in all workplaces.”

The proportion of people working from home has grown steadily from 11.1 per cent in 1998. The ONS also found that home workers were likely to be well paid and highly skilled; the median wage for someone working from home is £13.23 an hour, compared with £10.50 an hour for other workers.

According to a study by the Carbon Trust, the widespread access to fast broadband, smartphones and the use of cloud storage has made homeworking a viable option for most companies. If staff are able to work from the comfort of their own home, companies can downsize their energy needs within their offices.

Furthermore, if employees were working remotely then they would provide significant environment benefits by not having to drive to the office.

The Carbon Trust points to telecoms giant BT’s homeworking policy, which apparently saved 14,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent over 12 months. The change meant BT could reduce its office space and save £60 million a year – roughly £6,000 per full-time homeworker.

Hugh Jones, managing director of advisory at the Carbon Trust, commented: “Homeworking is on the rise, with numbers increasing by over half a million since 2007… In the right circumstances, it has the potential to be expanded significantly and be a win-win for business and the environment.”

However, some have stressed that the energy saving benefits of working from home should not be overestimated. On the one hand, it is suggested that some homes are not as run as efficiently as modern offices, thus meaning that having someone at home – requiring the heating and electricity to be on – would be worse for the environment. As such, the real benefits are only said to be realised when the homeworker is located a long way from the office.

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.