LEADERS of democracies need higher skills than their counterparts in autocracies. Elected leaders must persuade, convince and cajole people to sign up to their vision of a better future. Tyrants can simply have their opponents shot.

The same is true of the non-hierarchical corporations that are beginning to emerge in the corporate world. Chief executives can no longer rule by fear.They must communicate their strategy to every member of staff and infect them with the same enthusiasm for the product and the company — and trust them to get the job done.

British managers, however, are a long way from trusting their workers to put in an honest day’s work for their pay without continuous supervision, if their attitude to teleworkers is anything to go by.

Teleworkers are the revolutionary guard of the new corporate democracy, working at home at least one day a week and often spending the rest of their time travelling to clients. Many rarely visit the office.

But new research by Mitel, the telephony company, shows that nearly 50 per cent of managers do not trust employees who are not in the office to work. Two hundred senior decision makers were interviewed, and one in three did not allow teleworking because they believe that teleworkers do not put in a full day. One in six regarded teleworkers as slackers, and a third would prefer to promote office-bound employees over the heads of the absentees.

Simon Gwatkin, vice president of strategic marketing at Mitel, believes this attitude is wrong and damaging for a company’s long-term prospects.

“I hope the uptake of teleworking has not stalled because it is essential to the economy. It opens up pools of resources for your company, such as parents who want to work flexibly and talented people who might not want to live close enough to commute.”

The survey also confirmed that teleworking is being driven by employees rather than managers.

Studies show that teleworkers get the job done. “The perception of teleworkers putting in shorter hours and not working as hard, just because they are out of sight is archaic,” Gwatkin says. “If an employee isn’t producing their work, then a manager will know, whether they are in the office or not.”

Managers should stop worrying about slacking and start thinking about getting the most from workers outside the office. Technologies such as collaboration software, instant messaging and conference calls can all help to re-establish a team ethos even though the members may physically meet only intermittently.

“The idea of virtual teams constantly in touch through instant messaging, on the fly conference calls and integrated access to the same information has become a reality and is accelerating through the uptake of presence and availability tools,” Gwatkin says.

One of the most powerful technologies both for team building and reassuring anxious managers is “presence”. The system indicates where everybody is and how available they are.

Presence is indicated partly by the system, which can tell if a worker is using the computer at home or a laptop on the move, and also knows if the person is on the phone. The user can also put up electronic “do not disturb” signs.

“Presence could help managers to establish trust with their workers because they can see they are online and at work,” Gwatkin says.

Features such as video conferencing can also help to cement relationships, although video remains the great unused technology despite being perfectly serviceable and cheap on any computer with a broadband internet connection.

This may be something to do with relaxed dress standards in the home — a recent survey indicated that a third of teleworkers admitted to occasionally working in the nude.