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By Sally Watson, 25 August 1999 00:25

NEWS Less than two months after the launch of its internal teleworking recruitment drive, BT has hailed the project a resounding success, claiming that staff are happy to work from home - and that the company has made significant costs savings. On 1 July, the telecoms giant unveiled Options 2000, a voluntary scheme which aimed to encourage administration and sales staff to work from home. The company is offering free remote access equipment, a £650 furniture grant, and safety checks as an incentive. Neil McLocklin, head of BT's Workstyle Consultancy Group, told Silicon.com that over 2,000 employees had taken up the offer during July, bringing the company's total number of home-contracted workers up to 3,500. "We've had really positive feedback," he said. "We're certainly not short of volunteers." The company connects its teleworkers to a secure intranet over a remote access server. Employees log on using an encrypted security token which changes pattern every minute. "We are trying to integrate different lifestyles and different clocks," McLocklin said. "We're not all nine-to-five people." He added that the company is especially suited to teleworkers as most jobs are project-based. Altogether, 18,000 of BT's employees have some capacity to work from home on at least a part-time basis, a number it hopes to double over the next year. "There are vast cost savings," McLockin said. "The cost of one desk at BT is over £5,000 per year - you can work out the cost savings yourself." Roy Guthrie, a director at teleworking association, TCA, said home working is becoming increasingly acceptable in the corporate workplace. "A year ago it [teleworking] was frowned upon, but now people are happy to measure it by the amount of work that is being done. "Teleworking or telecottaging is probably a bad term for it, it makes it sound old fashioned," he added. "It's got to be seen as commercial."