Undeniable Reasons Remote Working Is The Future

Remote working is the future or is it? The typical office setup of a desktop setup for a new user and working from one place is slowly changing.

With more users working from home we ask is the work desktop dying? Flexible working is becoming a necessity for businesses to encourage the best staff to stay.

With flexible working team members can work from home or indeed wherever they want.

Technology advances all the time and with Broadband speeds increasing working from home is no longer a hindrance.

It has become easy to equip staff with everything they need to do their job wherever they are, do you believe remote working is the future?

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Having the flexibility of working from home your security needs to be adequate to provide a secure working environment, to both your onsite workers and home workers.

Locking down devices to only use trusted information and preventing the use of personal accounts can be one option. We recommend enforcing secure passwords on devices and usually turning off the four-digit pin option.

Risk Of Security Breaches

With home workers, there is an added risk of equipment being left behind. We all have heard stories of devices being left on a train, the embarrassment caused and possible financial losses or personal information can be devastating.

Staff needs to be educated to take care of devices and adequate security measures need to be implemented by your IT department.

Benefits Of Working From Home

Working from home can have benefits to both businesses and staff.

Many doors can be opened up to the quality of staff you are able to encourage to work with you by adopting flexible working.

We list a few benefits we consider:

Work wherever you want – Modern technology has given us the opportunity to work wherever we want in the world.

Just consider this you can be working on a laptop while sitting with a cocktail sitting on a beach lapping up the sun.

Increase in productivity – Proving you have hired reliable staff then working from home takes away the stress that working environments can provide.

No staff interruptions and no time-wasting from commuting.

Larger talent pool – By allowing remote workers it opens up a greater opportunity to hire staff that would alternatively not consider joining your business.

We don’t always know personal circumstances but having the option of working from home can change someone’s life

Cost savings & Time – Remote workers can save on costs for multiple reasons, depending on your business procedures you may be running a “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) setup.

An employee bringing their own laptop can benefit you and the employee. I would consider using my own laptop for work so I am sure many others do too.

Not supplying equipment in an office can save money too including the cost of the electricity required to keep an employee running as well.

The time savings must be considered when factoring that employees won’t need to be commuting far, a quick morning coffee and toast and you’re at work.

Commuters can spend hours traveling, for example, we have an employee commuting and over the year not counting holidays it would work out at 23.3 days per year just on traveling.

Improved work/life balance – Homeworkers will often take fewer holidays as they already feel like they spend less time working.

However, we find it works out that dedicated workers do more work as they feel obliged to continue working where needed.

Also, the lack of commuting and sitting at an office all day gives people a chance to exercise and control their diet better due to being at home.

The time with young children is crucial and working a distance away from home can lead to depression, boredom, and troubles at home.

Disadvantages Of Working From Home

There are drawbacks to working from home. In an ideal world, we would have perfect employees that made the right decisions but this isn’t always the case.

Performance Monitoring – Tracking what an employee does can be difficult, your IT department can put measures in place so that employees’ Internet habits can be controlled and tracked. Other aspects to be considered are employees getting distracted and watching TV.

Information Security – With Home workers, we have less control over what goes on outside the office. We need to put security measures in place to take into account the vulnerabilities that could be exposed if we don’t make enough restrictions on what data can be accessed and in what way.

Team Spirit – Having a worker solely working from home can become a bit of a depressing affair, yes you can become more focused but you can form a disconnect with your team. If possible I would suggest having the home worker commute at least 1-2 days a week, this way they can take part in meetings and discussions that typically occur in the office.

Not Suitable – let’s face it we can try but not all jobs suit working from home. Consider a Call Centre worker having the full kit and setup at home to be able to do their job can become both costly and impractical. A Call Centre worker often needs to interact with other departments and managers. Call tracking is not always possible or call recording/monitoring services.

Performing the analysis required to mirror the performance of a homeworker to an office worker can be a costly affair, the variables are just not the same.

We are pro-home workers, our engineers often work from home or wherever they happen to be during a support call.

Just last week I had just bought some lunch and had an issue with a client.

I pulled out my iPhone and connected it to the client’s machine, within minutes I was able to resolve a potentially costly issue for the client.

What seems a quick fix for us can be a lifesaver for someone else, remote working is the future, or are you still unsure?

If you are considering embracing the home working space and need support, complete our form below or call us on 01423 438953