Allow Employees to Work Remotely
While some debate the value of enabling remote employees, many small and medium-sized businesses see teleworking as an ideal solution for growing a company without a central office. While some SMBs adopt technology solutions like virtual office phone systems from AccessDirect as a cost-effective communication solution due to restricted budgets, they are also achieving a number of business advantages as a result. Recent research has found that companies embracing teleworking have better chances of seeing a related rise in revenue and an increase in employee productivity than businesses that confine employees to traditional office environments, Dynamic Business reported.
“Working from home or cafes, rather than a central office location, means that communicating with remote employees can sometimes be difficult to arrange,” the Dynamic Business article stated. “Luckily, new technologies provide ample opportunity to effectively work with – or even manage – a virtual team, and these days getting equipped to work remotely doesn’t have to mean a significant investment.”
Enabling Remote Workers Requires Creativity
Dynamic Business is not the only one taking note of the evolving business environment. Business News Daily contributor Kevin Kuske also recently detailed the rapid pace at which the work environment and the nature of work is shifting. However, with all the change occurring in the corporate ecosystem, what remains constant is how important people are to the success of entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Benefits of Remote Employees
Changes taking place in business that have been contributing to the rise of teleworking include significant advances in technology, which enable work to be performed from anywhere. In addition, Kuske cited global urbanization as a factor, maintaining that anywhere from half to two-thirds of the world’s population lives in cities. There are also generational changes occurring, including baby boomers exiting the workforce and Generation Y – also known as the Millennial generation – entering the workforce in larger numbers.
How to Manage Remote Employees
Furthermore, business decisions and behavior are beginning to be driven, in part, by initiatives to maintain or reduce a business’s carbon footprint. In this emerging new environment, Kuske argued that being both together and apart is important.
“Coming together is important,” Kuske wrote. “Creativity, innovation and a strong sense of culture all build off of connections and trust. It is also important to ask, why do high performance mobile workers still come to the office? The come for very simple reasons: people need people, people need technology and people need spaces that bring those two together in effective ways that help build bonds and trust. Innovation cannot exist without these. Choice and control are equally important. Different types of work are best done in different settings, and all of that flexibility can’t be delivered by one desk and chair. Is that how you work at home? Serendipity does not only happen sitting next to the same person everyday.”
Regardless of a business’s specific office situation, a virtual business phone system and virtual answering service from AccessDirect provide the technology needed to adapt to changing office conditions and enabling remote workers. The ability to work remotely can be a benefit to both you and your customers.
