Does Remote working benefit your business?

As we have already seen across the world, this unprecedented situation is likely to continue for some time and is evolving. As a business and as a community, at XRX Business Centre we have begun discussions to help maintain the health of employees and their families, customers and business partners. As we prepare over the short, medium and long term, we consider the feasibility of working from home.

Stamford University published an article in The Quarterly Journal of Economics. February 2015, Vol. 130, Issue 1 summarising a study they conducted in which 16,000-employees at a NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel agency volunteered to be part of the study. They were randomly assigned either to work from home or in the office for nine months.

The study showed: “Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9% was from working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days) and 4% from more calls per minute (attributed to a quieter and more convenient working environment).”

Additional studies also found:

  1. Productivity Improves — Teleworkers are an average of 35-40% more productive than their office counterparts and have measured an output increase of at least 4.4%.
  2. Performance Improves — With stronger autonomy via location independence, workers produce results with 40% fewer quality defects.
  3. Engagement Improves — Higher productivity and performance combine to create stronger engagement, or in other words, 41% lower absenteeism. 
  4. Retention Improves — 54% of employees say they would change jobs for one that offered them more flexibility, which results in an average of 12% turnover reduction after a remote work agreement is offered. 

With working from home looking like a viable business solution, we turn our focus to the tools that can make this happen including a communication system that can support it.

There are many issues with a traditional phone system and remote working. The management of redirects is complicated and there is no contingency if a call goes unanswered, maintaining the network requires site visits from technicians and the cost to implement and maintain a system is often out of reach of small businesses.

To minimise the impact of COVID-19, a fast track programme was made. Combining first-class collaboration features with carrier-grade phone services and seamless transitions between the office and digital apps.

Tim Jackson, Access4 Managing Director, said: “The programme introduction recognised the need to makes industry-leading software accessible to business, no matter their size.”

The New FastPort solution, available through Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS), allows call redirection within 24 hours. It uses a single 1800 number to manage redirections during the service migration and it connects customers prior to the completion of the port. Once porting is complete, the new service transitions automatically, resulting in a seamless experience.

 In addition to this, the following is also offered as part of the solution:

  • Reduce telephony costs
  • See the presence of remote working colleagues through UCaaS
  • Chat through unified messaging
  • Create ad-hoc collaboration spaces to share documents instantly
  • Remove the need to buy large scale systems and hold onto these for years to come
  • Improve the ability for staff to collaborate from almost anywhere
  • Have a single phone number reach across multiple devices or locations
  • Service will be identical at all locations

To help encourage small business customers to adopt MS Teams, UCaaS provider, Access4, will also support a recent Microsoft initiative and remove its licensing component from MS Teams until 30 September 2020, lowering the cost by up to 50%.

Jackson said, “For smaller organisations, the impact of implementing a remote work or work from home policy could be beyond the cost of consideration.

“We believe Microsoft Teams Calling is a great solution because it’s a platform that any business using Office 365 has access to. Our enhanced product also gives customers the ability to add tailored business features without any on-site hardware or installations – all within the one system.”

If you would like to know more regarding Access4 or would like to find out how you can migrate to this system taking advantage of the FastPort offer, contact our XRX Telecommunication Specialists on 47 599 402

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