Flexible working is a new obligation.
As a manager or business owner in the UK, you face an increasing obligation to allow your staff to work flexibly.
As of April 2009, all employees with children under the age of 16 or who care for a sick or elderly relative are legally entitled to ask if they can work from home or somewhere else away from your premises.
If you prevent them from doing so, you could face a discrimination claim or even an employment tribunal.
You may also feel increasing pressure upon your business (both from customers and the Government) to reduce your Carbon Footprint.
But do these issues really pose a problem for your business? Or are they in fact opportunities? What if we told you that making your company a more flexible place to work could make your staff happier, more productive and more loyal to your organisation? And what if you cut costs, and reduced your Carbon Footprint at the same time?
Your office can also have many disadvantages as a place to work:
- You waste a lot of time commuting. (The UK average is about an hour per day).
- Office space costs money (at least £250 per workstation per month, rising to £650 in London).
- The office can be a distracting place - office gossip and the dreaded question: "can you just help me for a second?" disturb your concentration. And how often do you get called into meetings that you have little if anything to contribute to?
So perhaps allowing your staff more time away from the office is not such a bad thing?
Working from home never used to work...
The promise that one day we will all work from home (or tele-work) has been around for some time. Until recently, however, the technology for home-working has failed to live up to such promises because:
- Home Internet connections were too slow.
- Most houses only had one web connection and space for one computer.
- The web-based tools for collaborating with colleagues were hard to use and didn't work very well.
- The tools also didn't allow managers to organise their teams' work or monitor output properly.
- Employees didn't have enough experience of using web-based tools.
These issues meant that home-working was simply not as productive as coming into the office; plus it was seen as too risky, regardless of how unproductive the office itself might be.
But home-working can be beneficial...
However, if there was technology that supported it properly, what benefits would enabling home-working bring?
- Your company could comply with UK employment law more easily.
- You and your employees would not have to spend between five and ten hours a week stuck in traffic. This time could then be spent with family or socialising (or even doing more work).
- If enough employees worked from home, your office could be down-sized, as they wouldn't all need to be there at the same time. This could save your company a lot of money. (It has saved BT £350 million thus far).
- Despite what you may think, your employees would generally be more productive: companies that encourage flexible working see a 20% gain in productivity on average.
- Your company would be seen as a more attractive place to work.
- You could attract job applicants from a wider catchment area as they wouldn't have to visit the office every day, giving you a bigger pool of talent to pick from.
- The reduction in travel related to your company would decrease, which in turn would reduce your Carbon Footprint.
... and the technology has caught up.
Nowadays, the technology that supports home working has finally caught up with the hype:
- Broadband is now being used in nearly 60% of the UK's homes, compared with the 8% that still have dial-up.
- Home networks with a shared Broadband connection are cheap and simple to set up.
- Web-based collaboration tools are entering the mainstream. SharePoint, for instance, is Microsoft's fastest-growing server product ever, while programs like GoToMeeting (for online presentations) are cheap and easy to use.
- People are becoming more used to complex "Internet Applications". For example, more 25-34 year olds than ever now use relatively-complex web tools like Facebook to organise their lives (and often do so at work). What if there were a Facebook for working with? (There is - it's called SharePoint...)
You might think that online collaboration products such as SharePoint are too expensive for a company like yours, and are strictly for the "big boys" who can afford expensive servers and systems admin staff.
Up until recently you'd have been right, but within the last 18 months Microsoft began giving away a version of SharePoint for Small Businesses for free. This free version of SharePoint is called Office Live Small Business, and we use it at Trovo.
Working flexibly can be addictive.
The Trovo team were first introduced to working flexibly over two years ago, and we wouldn't work any other way.
At Trovo, we believe that Small Businesses should have the same opportunities to benefit from new technology as the big boys get. And now that Microsoft are giving away one of the core technologies that supports flexible home-working, we are in position to help deliver such opportunities.
For instance, we can help you:
- Set up an Online Office.
- Create logins for you and your staff members.
- Set up the tools you and your staff will use to start working from home to your exact requirements.
- Show you and your staff the best ways of working remotely, based on our own experience. We know it works!
- Show you how to integrate your Online Office with your desktop Office programs like Word and Excel.
We offer two different Online Office packages:
- A one-off Trovo Online Office setup for £750 + VAT.
- A subscription to the Trovo Online Office service for up to 5 users for £65 pcm + VAT (for a minimum period of nine months).
Both options include setting up a Trovo Online Office to your specifications and a half-day's training onsite*. Plus: whichever you choose, you will be able to access to our FAQs and online training FREE.
However, if you choose to subscribe to the service, as well as effectively receiving the whole service for £165 less, we will also:
- Cover any hosting fees that Microsoft start to charge** (once your Online Office has been up and running for a while).
- Provide a 'next working day' support service by email.
- Invite you to special training events at a discount price.
- Offer you discounts on Trovo's upcoming Online Office modules for sales, marketing and more.
- Take a weekly 'second-line' backup of your site (on top of Microsoft's own backups) for extra piece of mind.
So to find out more about how it works, how you could cut costs and make your staff more productive, take a tour of the Online Office now.
Or if you'd like us to tell you more about it, give us a call on 0116 232 5147 or fill in our contact form and we'll call you back at a time that suits you.
References:
* Available in the East Midlands region of the UK only.
** Hosting charges only apply - Microsoft Online Office hosting charges on 22nd February 2008.
- FREE-First 50 MB
- 1GB=£2.99/month
- 2GB=£4.99/month
- 5GB=£7.99/month
Extra charges also apply for more than five users.