More of us are working away from the office than ever before. While this trend was accelerated by Covid-19, businesses were naturally moving this way anyway. The modern workforce are younger, more focussed on maintaining a healthy work/life balance, and less tolerant of long commutes to jobs they could do from their desk at home.
This has meant that more than 80% of workers who worked remotely during the pandemic now plan to continue doing so to some degree moving forward.
This raises questions for businesses. Will staff produce the same quantity of work away from the office and their colleagues? More importantly, will it be of the same standard? These concerns have seen many businesses clamp down against remote working all together. At BDR we think there’s a better way. We believe that remote work is possible while still maintaining staff productivity, collaboration and quality of work.
Remote productivity statistics
A recent study by the London School of Economics and Political Science goes a long way to silencing doubts about the effectiveness of remote working. According to that study, access to remote work increases employee wellbeing and productivity.
Remote work is also great for creativity. We have heard from some businesses that they worry that innovation will be stifled without the collaboration the office brings. On the contrary, even without that ‘water cooler chat’ innovation has been shown to increase by 63% and 93% of remote workers are more likely to report feeling included.
Being able to access a different workspace has been shown to curb the effects of burnout. This is great news not just for businesses who have fully remote staff, but also those looking to implement a more flexible model. Hot-desking and hybrid working models are also a great way to access the productivity benefits of remote working, while keeping the office as a space for collaboration.
How to help your team work at their best remotely
This is where services like unified communications (UC) become essential. These are applications that allow staff to better transition to a different working environment, by making all the tools they’d use in the office immediately accessible. This includes voice calls, videoconferencing, instant messaging and file sharing. Efficiency is also improved by quick access to each staff member’s full list of contacts and CRM information.
It’s incredibly easy to deploy a UC service across your organisation. Once it’s set up, staff can log into the application on a browser, through a web app or access it on a mobile device of their choice. This means you can account for the different working habits of your team. Accessories like noise cancelling headphones provide a welcome break from the distractions of home working.
It’s also important to remember that remote working doesn’t just mean working from home. Your team may want to check in in any number of locations, whether they’re visiting customers, working abroad or just checking their emails on the train. It all falls under the same remote working umbrella. It’s crucial that in these situations you have access to both business mobiles, and a tariff that allows you to access a reliable signal on the move. Speak to BDR’s mobile specialists to learn more.
Why offering remote work is important
We understand that there is still hesitancy from many employers around implementing more flexible working practices. However, remote working is arguably more necessary for your team now than ever.
Work/life balance is incredibly important to most staff. It’s also the summer holidays. Many members of your team will have childcare needs and other reasons to work away from the office. You can also improve staff morale in general by allowing remote working to be put in place in the case of any extenuating circumstances barring staff from the office.
It’s important that when your team are away from the office, they can still access the technology that helps them to work at their best. Even if you don’t want to implement full remote working, it’s crucial that you have the option to keep a sense of business continuity in place, should your office become inaccessible. Thankfully it’s easier than ever to access all of your business services securely from any location.
As long as your team has the correct cyber-security practices in place, you can access your entire workspace. Using cloud computing allows you to share and access documents, and CRM integration allows you to maintain great customer service standards.
Small enough to care, big enough to cope
We hope this blog has helped to inform you about how remote working can benefit your business. We believe it offers businesses in a huge variety of sectors to make meaningful improvements to their operations. If you’d like to find out how to implement your own remote working plans, and the services that can make it happen, speak to BDR at 0800 975 3000
