Europeans at ease with remote working

Three in four business workers in the European Union regard the nine-to-five routine as a thing of the past, and feel completely at ease with the idea of working outside the office.

The findings are from a survey of 600 professionals in Europe and the Middle East carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on behalf of Intel.

Andrew Palmer, the EIU's global director of executive services, suggested that Europe may have reached a "tipping point" in the adoption of flexible working practices and technologies.

"In the past, we have seen a lot of resistance to the idea of mobile working from people higher up the office hierarchy," he said.

"That does not seem to be the case here. There seems to be a fundamental shift even among those in the older generation whom you might expect to be hidebound."

Palmer noted that there also seemed to be a greater acceptance of virtual team-working than before, with 44 per cent of respondents indicating that they were just as comfortable conducting meetings online as face-to-face.

"There are a lot of people today working with colleagues whom they've potentially never met," he said.

"That's a huge cultural shift compared to only five years ago. Clearly, people are increasingly comfortable with the concept of not necessarily being connected with people physically. That completely redefines the idea of a team."

Although technologies such as broadband, mobile and wireless are helping to drive these changes, Palmer suggested that there were also strong social reasons for the shift.

"Younger people especially are placing much more emphasis on the ability to work where they want, even above hard benefits like remuneration," he said.

Palmer added that respondents to the EIU survey are expecting major growth in remote working over the next two years. But he does not believe that this foreshadows the death of the office.

"There is a danger of people being forced to work on their own - swapping a collegiate environment for an isolated one - and that's not going to suit everyone," he concluded.