The 2,500 staff at O2’s Slough HQ were locked out today as the communications company staged a pre-Olympics flexible working pilot – the largest of its kind ever seen in the UK.

Employees began operating remotely for the day as the doors were shut and lights turned off at the business’ 200,000 sq ft office. Since 2006, the number of employers offering flexible working has doubled but an initiative like this has never been attempted on this scale.

A third of UK businesses are expected to encourage flexible working this summer as the country hosts the world’s largest sporting event, the Olympic Games.

After two months of preparation, the O2 initiative is being trialled ahead of the Games to establish how businesses can work remotely to avoid the expected operating, travel and business challenges, as hundreds of thousands of spectators descend on London and other host cities around the UK.

O2 will publish the results of the pilot and assist businesses ahead of the summer to implement contingency plans to better manage disruptive events that might otherwise impact on operations.

The flexible working day will also play a part in O2’s sustainability plans  in which the business pledges to help over 125,000 employees work flexibly  and collectively save over 500,000 miles of travel and over 160,000 thousand tonnes of carbon emissions.

Growing numbers of businesses will need to adopt such practices in the future, with the number of mobile workers set to exceed 1.2 billion by 2013 – 35 per cent of the total global workforce.

O2 has increased the adoption of flexible working practices since October 2010 and has saved £3 million in overheads to date, reducing the number of desks at the Slough HQ by 550 without reducing staff numbers.

Picture by Wikipedia user: Mtaylor848