Chiara Cavaglieri reports for The Independant

Working from home has potential benefits for employer and employee alike, with studies finding that it can boost productivity and reduce overheads as well allowing employees to fit work around their lives and avoid transport costs. And this Friday marks the third annual Working from Home Day.

With the recession in full flow, having employees work from home could open up more job opportunities. "As technology advances, more and more companies will realise the huge cost benefits," says Paula Wynne, co-founder of RemoteEmployment.com.

Rather than employ a full-time member of staff, many small businesses opt for the services of a Virtual PA service. Calls are usually diverted so that the small business retains their commonly used telephone number.

The majority of businesses using a Virtual PA choose to divert their calls to the service. Virtual PA services will normally give each client a unique telephone number which they divert to, in this way the operators (or Virtual PAs) are able to recognize which company is using the service and answer the call accordingly. By diverting calls to this unique number rather than giving the number out directly means that the small business is always in control of the calls coming in. They can choose to divert all calls, calls when their line is engaged or simply divert when they wish- for instance during lunches or meetings.

Working from home is the new casual Friday. It's one of those perks that many employers have incorporated into their policies, but it's still not the norm and most everyone wishes it were.

Employers have several reasons for wanting to limit the amount of work you do from home. They're not just being sourpusses about the situation, even if that's what you think. Most bosses who are hesitant to expand their telecommuting policies are afraid of giving employees too much room to mess up. Think about how many business casual experiments went awry when someone showed up in clothes more suitable for club-going. All you need is one blockhead to ruin it for everyone.

The buzz is all about customer service and call center outsourcing, also known as BPO (Business Process Outsourcing). According to Gartner, the outsourcing market in Europe has grown with over 6%, BPO with 10%. The market for offshore outsourcing (to low wage countries) is growing with a whopping 40% this year! However, the subject of outsourcing is not without controversy. So what's it all about?