ATHENS – Many still prefer to stand in line to pay utility bills instead of doing it online and almost all Greeks still go to a workplace instead of doing their job at home, coming 18th among the 28 countries in the European Union for having remote jobs.

Only 5 percent of Greeks work at home regularly, the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV) said in its latest monthly bulletin, although stressing that can increase productivity up to 50 percent and cut operating costs drastically for their employers.

It can also make it easier for workers to balance their private and professional lives, the report noted, said Kathimerini, and remote jobs are becoming a critical part of the digital transformation of the workplace with many able to work from anywhere in the world.

SEV’s analysts said the findings illustrate the Greek reluctance to react to change or technological advances or labor trends and argued that bolstering remote employment could boost productivity after a 12 percent decline during a nine-year economic crisis.

Remote employment is most popular in knowledge-intensive domains and enterprises such as information technology, healthcare and logistics but customer service, Internet marking, communications and other fields also have benefited substantially.