Marissa Mayer recently made the news for banning Yahoo’s work from home policy. The main reason cited was a desire to bring employees together, creating a closer community and team. It is also often assumed that unsupervised staff members working at home could become more easily distracted and work less efficiently.

However, latest research indicates that employees who work from home could rack up an extra 150 hours per year. The research, conducted by UCi2i, a video conferencing vendor, found that those who work from home end up doing so much overtime that it equates to an extra month of work per year. Therefore, a team of 12 staff working from home, would effectively equate to the output of one full time member of staff with no extra salary cost.

Wayne Mason, 2014 Business Breakthrough event director and head of group products and marketing at Imago Group, says, “Why does working from home lead to greater productivity and output from staff? Those that work from home say they are more comfortable, less distracted and their travelling time becomes working time. Everybody wins.”

However, Mason goes on to say that working from home does have its challenges, particularly communication difficulties as a result of lack of face-to-face interaction. He believes that video communication could be a solution to this particular dilemma.

Mason says, “By establishing a video conferencing system that can be deployed across all employee devices, face-to-face meetings can still take place regardless of where their participants may be.”

The Business Breakthrough Event will bring together industry leaders, CIOs and senior business decision makers to explore how conferencing and collaboration products and services could benefit businesses in the future.

The 2014 event will take place on 29 May at The Brewery, London. For more information or to book your place, click here.