An increasing number of micro businesses are using the internet to let people work from home or other locations outside the office, according to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics recently.

Illustration credit; Sean MacEntee on Flickr

“More than a third of micro businesses now use the internet to enable staff to work from home,” said Andrew Puljic, ABS Director of the Innovation and Technology Statistics Branch. “That’s an eight percentage point increase in two years.”

“For larger businesses, more than three quarters have the facility for staff to use the internet to work from home.”

One fifth of Australian businesses had a social media presence as of June 30, 2012.

“Just over half, or 52 percent of large businesses use social media, but when you get to micro business that drops to only 13 percent,” said Mr Puljic.

“Businesses in the Arts and recreation services industry were the biggest users of social media, with nearly half having a presence on social media, followed by the Information media and telecommunications industry.”

Four fifths of Australian businesses with internet access use it for financial activities including online banking, invoicing and payments, however not all businesses with internet access have a website or other web presence.

Nearly two thirds of these businesses said they did not see the need to have a website, and one quarter reported they lacked the technical expertise to set one up.

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