Remote, Flexible
As I sit on a train writing this,
with full access to my email,
remote server and messenger
I may as well be in the office.
It really demonstrates how
far technology has come in
past few years. The way that
business and technology
now integrates makes being
in an office almost a faux
pas. Business owners and
employees can enjoy the
flexibility of using every
available moment, no matter
where you are and not have
to pay a huge amount for
the privilege.
To allow remote/flexible working, SMEs
have been heavily investing in either
bespoke or “off-the-shelf” products to
support this method of working and stay
ahead of their competitors.
In fact, such has been the development
of Cloud services since the initial boom of
hosting that it is almost seen as unthinkable
that an application doesn’t have a Cloud
version. The requirement nowadays is
that all software must be have a Cloud
offering to stay relevant, which has forced
application developers to hurry a hosted
version of their application into production
through fear of falling behind.
This has prompted some serious questions
about the impact, both good and bad, to
businesses of the remote/flexible working
model. I find myself discussing this very
question a lot with clients (both current
& potential), family and friends and the
answer, as you can imagine, is never as
simple as is it should be.
There are two sides to this debate,
the ‘enablers’ and the ‘realists’. I’ll tell you
which camp I position myself in a
bit later.
Enablers outnumber the realists by a 9 to
1 and the simple reason is that remote/
flexible working has such a large range of
benefits to both employers and employees
that it seems like a match made in heaven.
Employers benefit from workers being able
to contribute at anytime, anywhere and by
Wor king
that Yahoo felt that the decision to allow
flexible working had led to fragmentation
on a grand scale. Side this with clear
performance issues with remote workers
and you have a crisis to fix, which will be
followed with a harsh reaction from Yahoo
em-ployees and an even harsher reaction
from the outside world, branding the
decision as “backward thinking”.
providing this setup, the business is set
to grow faster due to higher productivity.
To the employee work/life balance is
improved dramatically by not only being
able to squeeze every possible moment
out of everyday whilst travelling, waiting for
meetings and even drinking coffee but to
wake up and be at your computer, ready to
work within moments.
This makes for a very attractive offering and
enables businesses to get the best people
with such perks and compete hard with
other suitors by offering flexible working to
make the package all that much sweeter.
Now for the realist view. I know you think
this is now going to turn into a lesson about
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