11 May, 2009 - London and Zurich - This week is Work Wise Week (12-18 May) and many firms will be looking to deploy or increase homeworking strategies for employees, but those companies must look beyond purely connectivity and security issues to make it a success, according to web scheduling platform, Doodle.

Although IT and HR managers' first priority is to secure data and hardware leaving the office as well as providing adequate bandwidth provision to the home, they need to consider Work Wise Week as an opportunity to look at new ways to streamline working practices. Doodle recently found that five hours of the average UK manager's working week were spent purely arranging meetings, something that could be dramatically reduced using online scheduling tools.

"Although there is nothing new about homeworking many firms will be looking to increase it as a way to reduce costs and improve efficiency and staff morale during Work Wise Week," said Doodle CEO Michael Näf. "Meetings are an inevitable part of business and Doodle has proven that the current way we tend to schedule them - via email volleys, calendar notes and phone - is a massive drag on productivity. This becomes even more apparent when employees are off-site."

Doodle is a simple-to-use, free online tool that helps organisations and individuals save time organising meetings by offering a transparent view of everyone's preferred choices. It closes the gap between the main calendar systems on multiple platforms, including Microsoft Outlook and mobile platforms, so is ideal for remote workers. It has strict security and, as a light website with no downloads to perform, does not require high bandwidth.

The UK Government backs more flexible working, and homeworking can drive streamlined business methods and increased use of thin client apps in ‘the cloud' that we then adopt in the workplace, according to, Phil Flaxton, chief executive of Work Wise UK, the organisation behind Work Wise Week.

"Remote working offers the chance to try out new applications that further improve overall operational efficiency," said Flaxton. "Applications such as online scheduling tools should form part of the overall technology armoury as part of a cultural change in the way companies view remote working."

Doodle recently found that UK managers and administrative assistants burn an eighth of their working week simply arranging meetings and conference calls, which has a massive cumulative effect on business. Doodle estimates that the time spent arranging meetings each year equates to £3,932* of an average manager's salary and £1,886* of an administrative professional's, illustrating the cost to business of ‘traditional' ways of scheduling meetings.

You can read the full report here: http://doodle.com/about/mediareleases/survey.html.

- Ends -

*Average salaries were calculated according to consultants PayScale www.payscale.com: UK operations manager - £31,451 per annum, office administrator £15,086, although the Chartered Management Institute's published figure is much higher at £47,055 average salary for UK managers. The CMI's latest published statistic for numbers of managers in the UK was 4.3 million managers counted in 2006 [Source: http://www.managers.org.uk]. Actual time spent organising meetings = 4.86 hours per week, rounded up to five hours. We regard eight hours as a standard working day, 40 hours for a typical working week. http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Country=United_Kingdom/Salary

About Work Wise Week
Work Wise UK is a not-for-profit organisation which promotes smarter working practices, such as flexible, remote and mobile working, and working from home. It aims to give half the working population, some 14 million people, the opportunity to work smarter by 2011. Supporters of the Work Wise UK campaign include the CBI, TUC, the British Chambers of Commerce, BT, Transport for London, Equal Opportunities Commission, Scope, the RAC Foundation, Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, Technology Means Business and ACT Travelwise. For further information visit: www.workwiseuk.org.

About Doodle
Doodle makes it easy to find the right time for a group gathering or a meeting. With just a few clicks you can establish a "poll" - a tabular display of possible available time slots - invite participants and see clearly in a table which options best suit everyone. Doodle is a free web service, doesn't require any registration and is available in 28 languages worldwide. The usability and the entrepreneurial achievements of Doodle have been awarded across the world: For example, the Mashable Open Web Awards 2008 "Bloggers' Choice" and "People's Choice" (http://mashable.com/2008/12/16/open-web-awards-2-winners/), and the Swiss ICT Award 2008 (http://doodle.com/blog/english/2008/11/11/doodle-wins-swissict-award-2008/).

Doodle has more than 3 million unique clients with very strong growth in the UK. In Doodle's home country, Switzerland, 10 per cent of the entire population use the service at least once a month, and this figure is also growing.

For more information please visit www.doodle.com

Press Contacts

Tilman Eberle
Vice President of PR and Communications
www.doodle.com/press
Email: the@doodle.com
Telephone: +41 (0) 44 586 98 14

Further information (external website)