More people are working from home more of the time, according to survey released by Skype.The survey was commissioned by Skype through Incites Research to evaluate how business is “being conducted in more ways, from more locations, on more devices, and in more communication modalities than ever before.”The survey was carried out in the fourth quarter of 2010 and included “500 business end users and 500 technology decision makers” from large, medium, and small sized businesses.Work environments that are flexible and remote have become accepted and are important for productivity and hiring, the survey found. Of the firms that were assessed by the survey, 62 percent have remote workers and one third of the employees at these firms work outside of the office. The remote workers at the aforementioned firms are said to spend an average of 40 percent of their time working away from the office. The option to work away from the office remotely also helps business recruit and retain effective workers.In addition, the survey found that as a result of employees adopting their own personal technologies, the adoption of new workplace technologies has occurred; as opposed to resulting from company policy.In fact, in 67 percent of the organisations evaluated, employees were allowed to bring their own technology to the workplace (with 41 percent and 26 percent being able to use their own tools independently or with permission, respectively). Out of all of the organisations evaluated, only one third required everyone to use the same communication tools.Business people are utilising more alternative forms of communication tools including instant messaging, mobile text messaging, social networks, and video communications as opposed to the decline of utilization of legacy technologies. Interestingly enough, video calling is the communication tool to have the biggest expected gain in the year to come, the survey found.