The exact number of employees working remotely in the UK is difficult to define, not least because a precise definition of the remote worker remains elusive.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) plans to publish a compendium on flexible working later this year, which should analyse the impact of the right to request flexible working on both staff and employers. But until accurate, up-to-date figures are available, we can only really guess at how many people are taking advantage of flexible working or what they do for a living.

Remote workers are generally those who spend some or all of their working hours outside of their normal place of work, whether in the home, a different office or any other location. The specific working roles vary enormously, though sales staff, field technicians and knowledge workers tend to predominate.

One distinct group of remote workers appears to be prospering at least; customer service agents are steadily moving out of telephone contact centres and into their own homes or branch offices, either because of their own flexibility needs or as a company cost-cutting exercise.

Research from Datamonitor suggests that there were 181,000 remote call centre agents worldwide in 2005, about 3.2 per cent of the total. That number is expected to rise to 10 per cent in 2010, to about 857,000 globally, and from 55,000 to 304,000 in Europe alone.

‘It will not take off for all contact centre workers, quite a number will always be based within the contact centre itself. But a proportion will be moved to the home, the branch office or become completely remote knowledge or back-office workers,’ says Datamonitor analyst Mona Sultan.

A desire to reduce operational costs is a big factor, agree analysts, but there is much dispute on exactly how much money can potentially be saved.