Firms may employ IT contractors to implement the necessary technologies to allow their employees to work from home following today's severe weather conditions.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has highlighted the cost efficiencies that companies can receive when they enable their staff to work from home.

Rebecca Clake, the group's organisation and resourcing adviser, claims that businesses need to consider how to minimise the disruption caused by employees being unable to get to work.

She says that this is not an option for every firm but that those which have not rolled out these technologies will be damaged by this.

Ms Clake states: "Many companies that have put in place the technology and management practices to allow home-working reap the benefits at a time like this."

Last November, Infonetics Research's directing analyst Richard Webb recently warned that companies without an adequate infrastructure risk running out of bandwidth if large numbers of employees attempt to work from home.