More & more interest in working from home or telecommuting

A study put out today by Ipsos Reid said that roughly 75% of respondents believe employers are limiting their candidate pool because they don't offer work-from-home or telecommuting. The study goes on to say that 87% said that they were 'hungry' for technology that allows them to work from home.

Over the past few years Canadian employers have been more accepting of the idea of employees working off site, but there are still concerns over confidentiality and the productivity of unsupervised employees.

Here's an article in full by Derek Abma of Postmedia News.

Canadians want jobs they don't relocate for: survey

Companies would have better luck hiring the people they really want if they were less picky about where they worked, according to poll results released Wednesday.

The survey, done by Ipsos-Reid and commissioned by Microsoft Canada, showed that three-quarters of those asked believe employers limit their hiring options by not offering the choice of working off-site — possibly in a different city.

The poll found about 90 per cent of respondents would rather not relocate for a job, while 87 per cent said they were "hungry" for technology that allows work to be done from any location.

Other findings included 84 per cent saying that location can be a barrier to securing one's ideal job, and 88 per cent agreed that technology should help people avoid the need to relocate for employment.

"Canadian workers have historically been bound by the location of their employer," Kevin Stolarick, research director for the Martin Prosperity Institute, said in a statement issued by Microsoft. "Today though, workers have become upwardly mobile and dispersed across a massive geographical area as the scope of business expands across borders."

Stolarick's organization is a think-tank associated with the University of Toronto's Rotman School of management, which looks into the role geography plays in economic prosperity.

Barbara Jaworski, CEO of the Toronto-based Workplace Institute, an independent consulting group, said she agrees that location should play less of a role in determining whether someone is able to accept a job.

"I totally agree with this survey," she said. "I think more and more people are definitely wanting to have the option of working from wherever they are."

Jaworksi said more flexibility from employers on this matter would be good for employees, who wouldn't have to disrupt their lives and that of their families to take employment in other locations.

She also said it would be positive for employers who would have more candidates to choose from for job openings, and they could potentially see less disruption in their operations from things such as illness when employees are set up to work from home.

Jaworski said private-sector employers have, in recent years, become more open to remote-location employment arrangements, but there is still much resistance in government, where security of information is often cited as a concern.

The online survey of 1,046 Canadians was taken between Oct. 25 and Nov. 1. The results were weighted to reflect the demographic makeup of the country so the results accurately represent the opinions of Canadians.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Canadians+want+jobs+they+relocate+survey/3844070/story.html#ixzz15aaIeG7O