"European Perceptions of Remote and Flexible Work", http://www.flexibility.co.uk/flexwork/general/nextra2001.htm, cites the European countries where the highest number of people work at least one day a week from home.
France is not even listed - but here I am.
The report identifies barriers to remote/flexible working:
- lack of prioritizing from management
- inadequate and corporate IT systems
- corporate expenditure issues
- technophobic employees or end users
- poor implementation of new products and solutions
I was surprised not to see "reduced social interaction" on this list. I know a lot of my colleagues in Sun France take advantage of the flexible work practices to be able to connect to work from home during the evenings or early mornings and so facilitate communication with other timezones.
However, France is a country where social interaction at work is very important and so I believe French workers would be slower to work full time from home for fear of missing those coffee-time and lunch-time conversations.
These social interactions are of course important for innovation and cross pollination of technology as well as the obvious benefits of chatting to like minded, friendly folks.
But I'm an unsocial workaholic and so work from home :)
There is another type of social interaction available in the virtual world I work in but that is a subject for another day.