Partner Article

Don?t let snow bring business down

Friday’s snowstorm has forced thousands of schools and businesses to close and caused major transport disruptions across the UK, with sections of major motorways being shut and the northern runway at Heathrow closed. Many businesses have been sending employees home and with more snow forecast, employers will be worrying about the impact of this disruption on their businesses and their ability to deliver services as usual.

According to reports, Britain faces its coldest weather in 100 years, so business owners need to brace themselves and look at how they might be able to support employees who need to work at home and ensure they are as productive as possible. One way of doing this is through the introduction of cloud computing technologies that support remote and home working, enabling people to work as productively from home as if they were in their offices.

If companies opt for a hosted desktop solution, employees can log in remotely to their own desktop from any location with an internet connection and any device. They will be able to access their company’s email and all their “systems” and information they need for work – ensuring business as usual. They won’t be reliant on the office servers to access their emails and files and so can work as normal. Through the outsourcing their data to a cloud computing provider, companies will also see other benefits including improved IT performance, as all employees will be provided with the very latest software, a huge reduction in IT administration as they will no longer need servers in the office and all security and data backups will also be managed by the provider.

Yet in spite of the availability of such technologies and the fact that it makes financial and business sense, many UK businesses resist embracing flexible working and supporting a remote workforce, fearing the impact it might have on productivity. Last year research from Skype and YouGov amongst 2000 UK workers revealed that 70 per cent of people want to work from home more often and yet often such requests are vetoed by employers. According to other research from Cisco, the desire to work from home is so strong amongst some employees they would be willing to take a pay cut in order to do it. Cisco found that 56 per cent of workers would happily earn 10 per cent less in exchange for flexible working.

However, as the London 2012 Olympics clearly demonstrated, just because employees are allowed to work remotely, it doesn’t have to disrupt business. As many as 1.5million people in the UK were reported to have worked from home during the Olympics. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, more than half (52%) of companies made temporary changes to their working practices during this period enable staff to work more flexibly or to allow them to watch key events at work. Well planned and executed contingency plans were put in place, and some companies saw the Olympics as a golden opportunity to test the waters in terms of introducing flexible working hours.

Many of our clients in the charity and business sectors report that one of the key drivers for them adopting cloud computing was to enable employees to work remotely. One of our clients, mental health Oakleaf told us that since they went to the cloud the ability to work from home has specifically meant that when it has snowed they have not had to struggle to work later in the morning but have been able to carry on seamlessly.

This week the government announced plans to introduce flexible working rights for all employees not just working parents this year, signalling that businesses are going to have to sit up and take notice and potentially introduce greater flexibility into their working patterns. Not only would this ensure business as usual when snow and adverse weather hits, it could have a major impact on employee engagement and wellbeing.

A report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in May 2012 ‘Flexible Working Provision and Uptake’ found that providing flexible working arrangements can have a positive impact on a number of areas of organisational performance. Nearly three-quarters of employers felt that implementing flexible working practices has a positive impact on staff retention, with just 3% identifying a negative effect. A further 73% report there is a positive impact on employee motivation, with 3% citing a negative effect.

With vast improvements in technology in recent years including high speed broadband, the rise in the number of people with computers, laptops and tablets and with technologies like cloud computing becoming mainstream, businesses could quite easily and affordably incorporate flexible and support home workers. There is simply no reason that businesses need to come to a standstill when it snows.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by David Sturges, CEO of WorkPlaceLive .