Removing the barriers to remote working

 

Instituting green office practices is of course admirable, but for many the simple act of getting to work is still one of the biggest contributors to personal and office carbon emissions.  According to a 2007 Time Magazine article , American commuters emit 1.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year on their way to and from work.  While the environmental impact of this alone is staggering, the same article goes on to point out that commuting also creates enormous economic losses for businesses.  American commuters spend approximately 3.7 billion hours of potentially productive time in traffic every year, which translates to $63.1 billion in annual losses for American businesses due to wasted time and fuel.

 

So what can employers do to help put a stop to this money-sucking, carbon-producing situation?  Promoting and enabling remote working practices is one way in which businesses can help reduce the pollution and costs incurred by millions of commuters.  Companies are increasingly leaning toward remote working policies in an effort to cap company costs, reduce employee commuting costs, fulfill “green” credentials, and keep employees happy.  Yet, there still remain a number of technology related roadblocks in the path to making successful remote working a consistent reality, and most of these roadblocks relate directly to the quality of experience of the remote worker.

 

Clearly, today’s office and access networks are able to reliably deliver the multiple applications and processes that we all need and use as part of our working day, and the access networks we have at home will of course allow employees to work remotely.  However, for the remote working employee, the experience falls short when it comes to real-time voice and video based applications, such as IP Telephony and video conferencing, both of which are becoming more widespread and are proving harder to maintain on the corporate network.  Issues such as delay, noise, echo, and picture blocking negatively affect the quality of experience on telephony and video calls, thus compromising the remote working experience.  If workers can’t effectively communicate with colleagues from their remote working site as if they were local, the attraction and experience of remote working is severely reduced, not only from the employees’ perspectives, but also from the support perspective.  No employer has the time or resources to fix all the remote worker application quality issues.  Unfortunately, these problems generally take a long time to resolve on the corporate network, as the tools deployed don’t understand application specific issues and how to diagnose them. 

 

Another significant problem that is emerging today is that once remote workers suffer from quality problems, they tend to lose confidence in the technology and will revert back to using their cell phone or landline, which defeats the original objective of deploying this new collaborative and efficient communications environment.  Again, employers do not have time or resources to try to rebuild user confidence once it has been lost. 

 

The answer to the issue of loss of confidence and extending operational and support resources, learned the hard way by many large enterprises today, is to deploy operational tools that are able to proactively monitor and diagnose the quality of the user’s calls, based on their actual call experience. Proactive monitoring and rapid problem resolution helps avoid confidence loss and enormous resource costs involved in troubleshooting voice and video quality problems. 

 

Instituting a remote working program will not only reduce carbon emissions and company costs, but it will also benefit the employees.  A 2005 study done by the Telework Exchange , an online community that strives to encourage remote working in the Federal Government, found that the US white-collar workforce spends over $355.8 million commuting to work every day.  By working remotely one or two days a week, the average worker could easily save significant amounts of money, a top concern in these dire economic times.  

Improved productivity is another advantage of allowing employees to work from remote locations.  Remote workers are able to utilize time that they would otherwise spend commuting, while also cutting down on travel risks that could prevent them from making it into the office, such as severe weather, transportation failure, and the like.  Employees also don’t have to deal with office distractions when working from home, which helps them work more efficiently.  According to The Midwest Institute for Telecommuting Education , overall employee productivity increased between 3% and 25% when employees moved out of the office to remote locations.  This statistic, combined with the fact that remote workers demonstrate increased employee satisfaction, shows that telecommuting is cost-effective and beneficial for both companies and workers alike.

  

It is important, however, for companies to give some thought to who in their workforce is best suited to work remotely. Some issues to take into account include how well employees understand their job function, their supervisory and security requirements, their level of self-motivation, and the effect that relocation would have on their workload and the workload of others.  Companies must also consider the cost and level of care and maintenance that would be needed for these offsite technologies and how it compares to the cost saving benefits of having their employees work remotely.  

 

The money savings and positive environmental impact of remote working is clear, but businesses cannot make it a feasible reality without possessing the tools to ensure a high level of voice and video performance and support across remote or access networks.  Investing in these technologies allows for successful remote working, which in turn results in lower company costs, happier employees, and a more environmentally friendly and responsible business model.  All of these factors contribute to a better and more efficiently-run businesses.  And, when all is said and done, isn’t that the point?