Telecommuters are not slackers getting an extra day at home, but are more committed, productive and have higher job satisfaction than people who work full time at the office, according to a year-long study of nearly 2000 employees in Australia and New Zealand.

There is also a high level of trust between managers and telecommuters, with 64 per cent of respondents saying their managers trusted them to work unsupervised away from the office.

Teleworkers are usually permanent, full-time employees who work more than 42 hours a week.

"The study found strong evidence of the positive benefits of telework for both individual workers and their organisations," the joint Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and University of Melbourne study found. "Among our sample, telework promoted improved productivity and satisfaction with work, with hybrid teleworkers performing better than those who do little or no telework." The results were issued on Wednesday morning at Melbourne University's institute for a broadband-enabled society.

Teleworking and off-site working was likely to increase, giving businesses an opportunity to reduce their operating costs, one of the report's authors and a lecturer in computing and information systems at Melbourne University, Rachelle Bosua, said.