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In a recent release, Interwise reported that UK employees blame office culture for slow adoption of remote working, toted as a major weapon in the environmental battle because of reduced transportation needs.

Remote working is the practice of performing work from a location outside the office setting.

30 percent of respondents mentioned corporate culture was a barrier to employee adoption of remote working practices. 25 percent added this same reason was to blame for the slow adoption of green initiatives.

Vice President and Fellow Diane Morello of Gartner feels that shutting out the possibilities provided by remote working ultimately hurts a company's relevance and value. "Companies which do not embrace remote working will find it difficult to recruit and retain staff. [Corporations] should respond to user pressure for presence-aware applications, social networking tools and wikis to support flexible working."

She added that attempts by IT teams to shun these tools will more harm than help a corporation.

Interwise VP International, Tony Gasson added culture was potentially "the most difficult of all barriers to overcome, beyond technology or cost" when it came to implementing aspects of remote working into the corporate space.

Other reasons for a reluctance to join the remote working revolution included:

• lack of "enabling technologies" in the work environment
• concerns about losing face-to-face social interactions
• distrust of remote workers by management

About 50 percent of employees surveyed felt equipped to work remotely, in spite of ruling sentiments that over half of meetings attended do not actually require their physical presence.

Interwise, which conducted the study in the UK, purveys Web, voice and video conferencing tools for businesses.