Despite acknowledging that smarter working practices can boost employee performance many companies are failing to adopt such techniques in practice, according to research by the CIPD.
The study found that while 92% of organisations agreed that a smarter approach - where the work environment is managed to get the best out of employees' energy - could boost business performance, very few companies had actually implemented such a policy.
In its Smart Working: How Smart is UK plc? report, the CIPD concluded that the key to smart working was to change management mindsets from "command and control" to embrace a greater degree of freedom, flexibility and collaboration.
But job process designs had not kept pace with such aspirations, the research found, while the majority of respondents were unconvinced that employers were deliberately designing roles around such a concept.
"There is still a significant job of work to be done to clarify what is involved in smart working and to support those organisations that have set out on that journey," said Mike Emmott, employee relations adviser at the CIPD.
"Smart working is about much more than implementing flexible working, hotdesking or new IT systems. It is about a fundamental change to the assumptions that shape the working relationship.
"Organisations are beginning to provide their people with a greater level of autonomy, choice and freedom than we have seen before," he added. "Offering employees increased autonomy in job roles is one of the smart working interventions most frequently reported by respondents to our survey."
The CIPD research identified four key levers that organisations must apply to achieve smart working: management values; high-performance work practices; physical working environment and enabling technology.
The study found that 87% of respondents saw smart working as a thoroughly modern phenomenon and believed it has more relevance for organisations now than in the past, while almost all (97%) believed the concept would become more relevant in future.