Are You Working From Home?

Unified Communications system

Today it is vital to have a UC (Unified Communications) system to efficiently and effectively work from home. When properly set up, you will have the same work experience as at the office.  Simply put, you enjoy the same phone number for work calls, access to desktop with the same applications.  Just like the office, co-workers/team members can dial you on a 3 or 4 digit extension and/or instant messaging. For all practical purposes, you are at your desk at work, only the desk is now at home.

With Corona virus guidelines in place, working from home is no longer a luxury, but a necessity and in some cases mandated by your state government.  Looking forward, companies that can be versatile or have efficient work from home strategies in place will enjoy a competitive advantage  over competitors who don’t.  Like it not, we all need to be able to function at full capacity when forced to be away from the office.  Obviously, not all employees are able to work from home, due to the nature of their work.  However, if your company correctly utilizes a UC system for all knowledge based workers, it will likely work out well.  Most certainly prepared companies will fare better, than companies utilizing more traditional communications system.

Companies who utilize UC systems, will likely experience less disruption to their collaboration teams and see that employees working from home are far more productive than companies who do not.  The positive impact on the bottom line, for workers able to function correctly from home, should not be overlooked.  As more people experience a remote work situation, it is inevitable that vulnerability items,  like VPN load and necessity for faster internet connections at home will crop up for some users.  However, the Corona virus is a forced opportunity, for companies to test preparation levels for similar challenges in the future and at least on this round the majority of companies are facing these challenges for the first time. Hopefully, companies will experience some positive results, along with the negative within the work from home and reveal where improvements must be made.

The recent health emergency could inspire more employee-friendly work from home policies from employers, to help recruitment and retention efforts.  For companies already utilizing UC systems, the benefits will likely come more quickly and easily.  For others, will come the realization, it didn’t quite go that well, mainly because they really needed to have a UC system in place.  Similarly, companies who moved to VoIP and SIP technology during the 2007-2008 recession, were able reduce costs dramatically and are in now likely to expand cloud and UC footprints.  Those companies, capitalized on the opportunity to reallocate operations costs to fund IT upgrades.  Once again, these companies who see the benefit in utilizing UC systems, will also see benefits from their work from home employees at a time when every advantage will make big differences in the bottom line.

If you are considering the installation of a new business phone system to help your employees work better from home, click here  http://priorityconnections.com/solutions/phone-systems/ .