Working from home—we've heard it all before haven't we? How it supports a more flexible work environment, ensures greater productivity, and delivers financial savings in office and travel costs. It's also greener and demonstrates a commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility. But if it's so obvious why aren't more companies maximising the potential?

Staff certainly prefer working from home; a recent survey carried out by Avaya found that 78% of staff would prefer the ability to work from home over a pay rise. So why not give them what they want?

Home working is likely to become an integral element of business operations. Staff have every right to request flexible working and employers have a legal duty to give any request serious consideration. In fact flexible working legislation has recently been extended to offer all employees with children up to the age of 16 the right to work from home, which may also force organisational reviews. So, offering home working to your staff before being forced to do so could make good business sense for you and your workforce.

Home networking benefits add up
The economic and operational benefits of home working add up to a tempting business proposition. Flexible working policies can help to retain key staff and expand the workforce without the added cost implications and overheads of new office space. Initiatives like hot-desking to reduce the number of seats can be introduced, or you could even develop a permanently remote workforce—supporting company growth without the traditional operational overheads.

Working from home also overcomes lost time spent commuting and the constraints of traditional office opening hours and, in addition, technology such as teleconferencing and video-conferencing maintain the need for face-to-face contact without compromising human interaction.

The rapid growth of electronic and virtual communication methods such as Twitter, messenger services and social networking sites can also provide an alternative channel of communication to maintain essential relationships with customers, colleagues and suppliers.

The traditional office is changing. We are moving away from the tribal manager with the team around them, set working hours, fixed costs and long commutes and heading towards an online community who works flexibly at less cost and more productively.

The business reality remains however that organisations need to balance these benefits and changes with the need for secure and fast access to business applications, and the requirement to adhere to health & safety and legal guidelines.

Is the technology piece really that simple?
Core to the move towards home working is the ability to provide secure, reliable and fast access to your main business applications when away from the office. Some broadband providers would have you believe that providing your staff with a home broadband connection is all it takes for increased productivity and lower operating costs but home networking isn't simply plug-and-play.

Below are five questions your broadband provider may rather sweep under the carpet.

1. Service: What happens if the broadband connection fails?
Time is money. If a home broadband connection goes down, then your employees' performance will be compromised. If staff are stuck at home with no Internet and no access to business applications for any number of days, then suddenly home networking loses its appeal.

When looking at networking options, cut through the sales jargon and look at the factors that really matter to your business. Is there a clear service level agreement with guaranteed availability? Service credits for down-time ultimately count for little when all you want is the service to be available. What's the average speed of answering when phoning for support? Is your network being pro-actively monitored? Once the fault has been accepted, you don't want to wait days, so same or next day resolution is essential, to ensure productivity is not compromised.

2. Performance: What about speed, bandwidth and prioritising key applications over your network?
Many business applications require faster round-trip times (the time taken to move information across a network) than can be offered by consumer broadband providers, who will typically guarantee 250ms, while many business applications require better than 100ms.

Another bugbear is the highly publicised furore of ‘Up to 8MB/24MB' advertising, where the average is actually around 25% of the advertised ‘Up to' speed, and sometimes much less at peak consumer times. This serves to compromise and reduce performance, directly impacting on the ability of employees to work productively.

To guarantee speed bandwidth and prioritisation you may need a business-grade MPLS network with Quality of Service and end-to-end performance guarantees.

An end-to-end guarantee is becoming increasingly important as organisations migrate over to other technologies such as Skype—without it, your company will have no guarantee of voice quality delivery to the user, effectively leaving you with no assurance that you have the right tools for the job.

3. Security: How important is this to you, including data protection?
Your staff, your applications and data still need to be protected from web-based threats and data leaks. There is a need to balance remote access with protecting your assets, and remote workstations need to have the same security protocols, web filtering and data protection in place as the office.

This is not possible with consumer broadband but it is by having an MPLS network and appropriate company-usage policies in place.

If security is absolutely critical, then a virtual, fully hosted solution where there is no possibility of sending or downloading information remotely makes sound business and even better financial sense.

4. Health & Safety: What are the regulations for home workers?
By law, employers are responsible for the welfare of employees' working from home, so businesses must carry out health and safety assessments or request workers to sign waivers.

When considering waivers—given new legislation around corporate manslaughter—it's advisable to put procedures in place to ensure staff are safe when using electrical equipment and take necessary breaks when working with visual display units for long periods of time.

Understandably, coordinating site visits to ensure compliance with all health and safety requirements presents an additional time and cost burden you might not have been aware of, especially if you have a large number of employees working offsite, but it's an essential consideration to avoid future issues. Your company insurance may also need to be reviewed to ensure it appropriately covers you and your employees.

5. Maintenance and Procurement: Who provides the home office supplies and equipment?
Staff will also require the necessary hardware, software and office supplies to do their jobs from home. Providing printers, scanners and fax machines for one office is one thing, extending this to a remote workforce is quite another.

Staff travelling to the local superstore to replace expensive toner, broken printers or even paper can be a significant and hidden false economy in terms of productivity and unnecessary additional costs.

When adopting home networking, you'll need to be aware of these requirements and the additional cost implications, in order to build it into your business plan.

Home networking in a box
Given the wider business implications involved in home networking, the headline-grabbing home business broadband rates that appear a good deal may not prove that cost-effective. You'll need to factor in the in-house resources needed for initial set up and ongoing support, from onsite HR and health and safety assessments to security and hardware updates and replacements.

Alternatively, home networking as an all-inclusive managed service may prove an easier and more cost-effective option for many businesses. The managed service approach provides end-to-end support through a single service level agreement, simplifying the management of the home network.

A managed home networking service is designed to covers all aspects of the connection from support and security to maintenance and health and safety. This ensures your business benefits from all the advantages of a remote workforce, and that you have the reassurance that home workers get business-quality support and access to applications, so that home networking delivers on its promises.

There is a strong business case for home networking—speed, bandwidth, but it's so much more than just a broadband connection.