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It's increasingly becoming more important to have flexible working styles to retain talentAS businesses evolve and operate at more global levels, working from home has become increasingly popular.迷你倉 The evolution of connectivity and related technologies, together with the Virtual Private Network, now means employees have the same business access from home as they would in office. But what does this mean for productivity?There are two main schools of thought on this. One is that working from home opens the door for employees to shirk responsibilities (and spend time catching up on chores and other non-work-related activities). The other is that employees become more productive due to enhanced trust, the lack of office distractions and the use of their travel time for a few extra hours of work.This debate was at the heart of a memo sent to the employees of Yahoo! earlier this year encouraging them to work from office in order to benefit from the energy and buzz that comes from being in the same location. This move divided public opinion between those who objected to the decision and those who supported it.A working-from-home model needs to take many factors into account. It depends largely on the nature of a business, the stage in a business' life-cycle, the particular role that an employee does, as well as the employees' personal circumstances. For geographically spread-out companies that operate across multiple locations, as well as those that have employees that are regularly client-facing, the working-from-home model often makes more sense.We are also seeing more roles having to collaborate with colleagues in different countries across multiple time zones, making a 9-to-5 office job a thing of the past. Having to regularly take calls out of office hours in order to keep in touch with different countries means the traditional work-life balance model is being looked out through a different lens by many companies.We also need to take into account the different socio-economic factors at play in the developed versus the emerging markets. In emerging markets, for example, you have a higher rate of extended family dependencies (for example, India). External childcare is also not as readily available as it is in the UK or the United States, for example. Also, infrastructure is not as developed (that is, getting to work is harder and often takes longer).These scenarios are making it increasingly more important to have flexible working models in order to retain top talent within a business.If companies are considering a flexible working model, it is important to look at the "productivity return-on-investment" for and from their employees. Research has shown that flexible working, including working from home, can actually enhance productivity within the workplace (depending on the particular role of the individual).Supporting the flexible working trend is the儲存surge around BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), which is seeing employees wanting to make their own decisions around the types of devices they need to best do their job. Experts believe that increased globalisation and access to a broader range of digital tools will transform the workplace in the coming years, making working from home much easier and commonplace.Today, more than 60 per cent of mobile workers use their own devices for work. In terms of demographics, Asia-Pacific has the greatest BYOD adoption with 62 per cent of mobile workers reporting they own the smartphones they use for work; closely followed by North America with 48 per cent. Europe falls behind its Asian and North American counterparts with just 37 per cent adopting BYOD. However, companies that want to adopt this model need to be ready from an IT standpoint to support a workforce that is very different from the workforce we saw five years ago.While employers expect staff to be accountable and responsible for where and how they spend their time, employees in turn expect to be able to work with the tools and devices of their choice.Employees of today are constantly collaborating with their colleagues thorough always-on connected devices. Technology such as two-way video means employees can be face-to-face while sitting across not only offices but two, three or even six different continents. Being at your desk no longer matters. As companies give or allow employees to choose the tools to work remotely, so does the dependence on application and services increase, particularly mobile services.Business networks inevitably account for greater scrutiny than ever, both within the enterprise and across the service provider. Everything ultimately depends on them - the quality, scalability, security and reliability of the network both within and outside the organisation is of prime importance.In line with this, the conversation around working-from-home moves beyond just the question of "shirking or working" to - Is your company actually ready for it? Is your IT team set up to support it and do you have the network provisioning in place to support always-on remote working?The flexible workplace is here. It is no longer a question of the future. According to IDC3, by 2015 the world's mobile worker population will reach 1.3 billion and represent 37.2 per cent of the total global workforce. The study also suggests that the most significant gains will be in the emerging economies of Asia Pacific thanks to - and, certainly, contributing to - continued, strong economic growth.Whether this model works for you as an organisation depends on your geographical nuances, socio-economic conditions, the nature and current stage of your business, and whether you are actually set up to effectively support it to produce productive results.The writer is global head of corporate communications, Tata Communications新蒲崗迷你倉