The demand for flexible working is on the rise, in fact many entrepreneurs and industry professionals prefer to work from home rather than in a huge corporate building. Primarily because they want to have more time with their family, reduce their daily cost and avoid being stuck in traffic during rush hour every morning. Although it may seem only your staff will benefit from this kind of set up the truth is your business will have an equal benefit.
By providing your staff with a better working environment and better working hours efficiency can be improved drastically this means better output for improved production. By allowing your staff to work from home you can also reduce your overhead cost. The more people working in the office the higher your bills will be and since your staff will be out of the office there will be no point in having a big office saving you more money on your rentals.
However to properly deploy a home working environment for yourself and your staff you might need to consider the following solutions to deploy the set up with ease.
Cloud PBX system – In a remote working set up communication will be the number one challenge however with a cloud PBX system distance will no longer be an issue as extensions can be located practically anywhere around the world and it will still work as if you are in the same building. This means that your sales staff and support staff can still answer calls as if they are in the office and corporate employees will be reachable on their extensions without any cost.
A cloud PBX will also open doors to outsourcing, since extensions can be located anywhere this means that you can hire staff overseas in countries where labor are cheaper. In fact many businesses have been outsourcing work load in Southeast Asia because of the high level of expertise of locals at a cheaper price.
Time tracker – Since your staff will be working at home monitoring is also important, not only to ensure that your staff are working the right hours all the time but also to ensure that you pay them what is due. There are many free and paid software available today that doesn't only track worked hours but also takes screenshots and application usage so you can monitor them properly.
Screen cast software – You might also need screen shot software for presentation purposes. Since you do not have an office to present ideas and business plans a screen cast software will let you scribble and present as if you are using your white board in your board room.
David Clarkson is a well versed telecommunication engineer with years of background in the industry, In his experience the demand of structuring internal and external communications for small to large scale businesses was perfectly solved by Cloud PBX technology and has recommended it since then.