Press Release Summary: . 84% of London businesses offer flexible working options, compared to 74% nationwide . 64% of London businesses allow employees to work from home, compared to 55% across Britain . 54% believe the government's plan to extend flexible working to parents of older children is a good idea, compared to 52% national average
Press Release Body: Amersham, UK. - 29th May, 2008: London is leading Britain in embracing flexible working in the workplace, with 84% of London-based businesses saying they have introduced flexible working options, compared to a national average of 74%, according to independent research commissioned by Citrix Online. Over half of London businesses (54%) also stated the government's plan to extend flexible working to parents of older children is a good idea, compared to 52% nationally. The study surveyed middle managers and above from 538 businesses across England, Scotland and Wales, as well as 1,800 working parents. London businesses highlighted staff retention (72%), employee satisfaction (71%) and providing a work-life balance for working parents (58%) as the key business benefits to introducing flexible working. Maintaining company culture was a concern for 35% of London businesses, but only 8% thought that quality of work would suffer. The study also showed that London businesses are leading the nation in embracing technology to help employees work away from the office, with 61% (national average 57%) providing a laptop, 50% (32%) offering a Blackberry or iPhone, and 47% (40%) providing software to allow employees to access their work PC remotely. The 1,800 working parents who responded to the survey said they believe that London businesses are meeting the needs of parents by offering flexible working options. Working away from the office was the top benefit that working mums would like from a job, ranking above a pension and an annual bonus. For 87% of dads, avoiding traffic and saving time by not commuting to the office were the best things about flexible working.
Denise Tyler, founder of Mother@Work (www.motheratwork.co.uk), the online magazine dedicated to helping working mothers get the right balance in their working, family and personal lives, commented: "Working parents worry about the effect that having children will have on their career aspirations, so it is promising to see that businesses are recognising the benefits of flexible working and introducing options that will really help employees." "London businesses clearly recognise the benefits of offering flexible working and are leading Britain in actively exploring ways to enhance employee satisfaction and retention," commented Bernardo de Albergaria, Vice President and General Manager, Global Marketing and eCommerce, Citrix Online. "Travelling less and being able to work from home are seen as key benefits by employees, so enabling them to access their PC and collaborate from anywhere will help businesses offer their staff the flexibility they desire."
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Notes to Editors
Methodology The research was carried out among 350 working mothers, who are registered users of the Mother@Work website, and 1,450 working fathers through the FQ Magazine portal. The business research was carried out by YouGov Plc. Total YouGov sample size was 538 middle managers and above working for private sector organisations of between 10 and 1,000 employees. YouGov Fieldwork was undertaken between 7th - 11th February 2008. The YouGov survey was carried out online.
About Mother@Work (www.motheratwork.co.uk) Mother@Work is an award winning online magazine dedicated to helping working mothers get the right balance in their working, family and personal lives. It was founded in September 2003 by Denise Tyler, a Brighton based journalist.
About FQ Magazine FQ is read by fathers and men whose lives and perspective have changed as they've entered fatherhood.
About Citrix Online Citrix Online provides secure, easy-to-use online solutions that enable people to work from anywhere with anyone. Whether using GoToMyPC® to access and work on a remote PC, GoToAssist® to support customers, GoToMeeting® to hold online meetings or GoToWebinarT for large online events, our customers are increasing productivity, decreasing travel costs and improving sales, training and service on a global basis. We have more than 35,000 small and medium-sized businesses using our products, and hundreds of thousands of individual professionals as customers. A division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), the company is based in Santa Barbara, California, with satellite offices and data centers throughout the world. For more information, visit www.citrixonline.com or call 805-690-6400.
About Citrix Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and the most trusted name in application delivery infrastructure. More than 200,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost. Citrix customers include 100 percent of the Fortune 100 companies and 99 percent of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers. Citrix has approximately 7,680 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2007 was $1.4 billion.
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Web Site: http://www.citrixonline.com
Contact Details: For media inquiries, contact: Danny Whatmough, Wildfire PR +44 (0) 20 8339 4420 or citrixonline@wildfirepr.co.uk
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