Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) lose an estimated £25,000 per year, according to new research.

IT services provider Avaya, claims that a fifth of UK businesses with 20-80 employees lose revenue because of absenteeism.

Despite this, 80 per cent of respondents stated that they would like to let employees work from home at least one day in the week.

Avaya UK country manager Nick Roullier said: "By deploying technology such as United Communications, which brings the communications environment of the office to any location, on any device, small businesses can leverage more flexible style of working that blend with an employees home life."

Only five per cent of respondents claimed that cost of technology was the reason they had not rolled out flexible working.

This follows news from the Internet Telephony Services Providers' Association which claims 60 per cent of small business senior decision makers spend a minimum of five hours out of the office a week.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent)