Office Space Advice
Regus: Let Employees Work from Remote Locations
Published January 12th, 2010 by Jennifer LeClaire
Letting employees work from another location at a moment’s notice saves time and money and provides positive customer perception that their supplier can continue delivering through any disruption. But it also puts the green stamp of approval on a corporate brand in the mind of consumers.
So says Regus. Regus isn’t just offering its biased opinion. The company even went so far as to commission research to support its argument that letting employees to work flexibly could save businesses money in staff turnover and recruitment costs.
Researchers surveyed 11,000 businesses in 13 countries. The results reveal that nearly one in five respondents globally have seriously considered leaving their job in the last two years because their journey to work is too long. Most countries showed a proportion of between 15 and 20 percent. That’s especially noteworthy considering the global recession over the past two years.
Commuters who spend over one hour to get to work showed a stronger tendency to want to defect to another company even though their job satisfaction remained high.
Employees’ Green Concerns
Of course, it’s not all about the cold weather. It seems some employees are concerned about the environment for different reasons.
Car emissions are the biggest contributor to CO2 pollution in the UK. By letting employees work from home occasionally this figure can be dramatically reduced while also enhancing a company’s brand reputation as environmentally responsible.
The UK government recently ran a TV advertising campaign which is encouraging everyone to reduce their weekly car mileage by five miles, a step which could collectively save approximately 2.7 millions of CO2 output each year in the UK.
Regus is quick to point out that companies can reach this goal by allowing an employee to work from home one or two days a week. Regus also pointed to telecom specialty company GemaTech to offer some advice on flexible working.
Tips For Employing Flexible Working
Specifically, Regus pointed to four of GemaTech’s tips for making flexible working a reality in your workplace. These will work just as well in the United States as they would in the United Kingdom or anywhere else employees office.
1. Identify which employees can easily work from home. Of course, not all employees can fulfill their job responsibilities from home. You need to be sure key employees such as sales staff, customer service staff, executive management and finance managers are able to work from home before making this suggestion.
2. Ensure that employees can receive their incoming calls. GemaTech says the most reliable solution is by re-routing calls via the PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network) which avoids the pitfalls of mobile phone network capacity issues and high demand for broadband capacity for IP Telephony.
3. Consider how the employee will securely access corporate data and systems.
Simple-to-use technology is available today to allow employees remote, secure access to their normal IT systems including e-mail, corporate directories, office applications including contact centre databases and servers.
4. Management of home workers is not difficult as long as regular communication between team leader and employees is maintained. For the manager who fears losing control, secure voice recording of re-routed phone calls is easy to introduce as is keyboard key stroke monitoring and recording screen data input.
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About the Author
Elizabeth Sanchez January 12th, 2010 at 6:57 am
I think Regus is using wisdom here by outlining some of the considerations companies need to think about before setting up remote office space for employees. It’s not brain surgery, but there are things that need to be handled. Regus, working with Gematech, makes some great points to think about with regard to office space.
Bill Brookshire January 12th, 2010 at 7:07 am
I wonder if green office space is a much bigger trend in the United Kingdom than it is here. I mean, I’ve heard they have much more aggressive eco-friendly requirements there, and based on the new guidelines to cut carbon emissions I would imagine the notion of a green office isn’t nearly as new there as it is here. Of course, it’s not really new here. I’ve been hearing about it for the last 15 years. But we’re just seeing more green office space now.
Karen Jones January 13th, 2010 at 4:54 am
Flexible working has so many benefits, particulalry for those of us in the UK who are currently working from home (including myself)as schools and roads are closed due to severe snow. To read my article in full go to http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/01/prweb3431224.htm