According to a recent Totaljobs study, as many as 65% of UK employers already provide their staff with the option to work remotely, while also finding that one in four workers would change jobs if they weren’t given that choice.

In the last ten years, the number of home workers has risen by an enormous 75% across the country, with an estimated 1.5 million Britons now working from home regularly. This sudden change in working practises is in no small part, down to the development of fast broadband connections and advancements in technology.

Thanks to the advent of the internet, many workers no longer need to be tied to a single office building and can now operate from a place which best suits them. However, without an adequate broadband connection in place, remote working can become almost impossible, and fast internet speeds should be considered one of your top priorities.

Connection speed is linked to productivity

From emailing clients to sharing documents with clients, a large part of your working day likely revolves around the internet. Of course, when your internet connection is slow and unreliable, this will inevitably hurt your productivity, since you’ll spend more time looking at buffering wheels than actually doing your job.

Slow internet speeds are particularly problematic for workers who need to regularly download or upload large files, with fibre optic broadband required to process larger amounts of data promptly. When you’re working on a shared workspace in London or New York, for example, downloading relevant files could become an essential part of your job, and this just isn’t viable without an adequate connection.

Whether you’re a freelancer running your own business or a regular employee who frequently works from home, fast broadband is vital if you want to operate productively. After all, the last thing you want is to spend your morning waiting for a file to download when you could be ploughing through the long list of tasks you’ve got to do that day.

A fast and reliable connection is critical to team collaboration

Although it certainly provides you with much greater flexibility and an improved work-life balance, remote working can also become a little lonely at times. Some workers will operate from coffee shops or shared office spaces to surround themselves with people, but the vast majority prefer to work from their own homes, meaning that they often spend large parts of the day entirely by themselves.

This also poses businesses with a significant problem, who undoubtedly want their employees to work together whenever possible. Collaboration has always been a vital component of a successful organisation, regularly inspiring new ideas and helping teams to achieve more impressive results, but encouraging remote workers to become part of the team can often seem problematic.

Fortunately, thanks to those advancements above in technology, it’s never been easier for remote workers to connect with other team members. In addition to shared workspaces and email platforms, workers can now enjoy valuable face-to-face interaction through video conferencing tools, although these don’t work well without fast broadband speeds.

In short, effective broadband will help you become part of the team, helping you to communicate, collaborate and develop relationships with your colleagues and peers. When you’ve got those things in place, you’ll inevitably become much happier in your work.

Fast communication is now an essential requirement

The speeds required to work from home will depend entirely upon the nature of your work and how you intend to communicate with colleagues. Sending an email, for example, uses much less bandwidth than an HD video call, so the choice between fast ADSL and superfast fibre broadband is entirely dependent on your circumstances.

Either way, once you’ve got the adequate speeds in place, broadband makes you capable of much faster, more efficient communication. Whether you’re staying in contact with your boss, maintaining relationships with clients or attempting to collaborate with other team members, fast broadband allows remote workers to communicate more effectively and truly get involved with projects.