With employees across the UK unable to leave home due to the heavy snow, the potential impact on UK businesses is significant – but it doesn’t need to be. Mitel’s survey shows that 91 per cent of people can improve the effectiveness of their job, irrespective of location, by using conferencing and collaboration solutions over a broadband connection. Employees can be empowered to work from home as if they were sat at their desk in the office, with no impact on productivity or customer service.
It is evident that with the recent snowstorms in the UK having a negative impact on business performance, that more organisations need to adopt these solutions as a priority.
Graham Bevington, managing director EMEA, Mitel commented, “I am astonished that organisations in the UK grind to a halt because of snow. There are no excuses for this with the technologies available in 2010. Organisations need to deploy conferencing and collaboration solutions to enable home working and keep their businesses operating as usual. These solutions are so cost-effective and easy to use that it is critical for organisations to adopt them and avoid unnecessary down time and loss of revenue.”
The benefits of home working are not isolated to times of inclement weather but also apply throughout the year to help reduce costs and improve productivity. Of those surveyed by Mitel, 12 per cent of UK companies enforced a travel restriction on employees in order to reduce travel expenditure in 2009. In addition, 25 per cent of business travellers would prefer to use conferencing and collaboration solutions instead of travelling, saving them both time and expense.
“Abbey Legal is an advocate of working from home, we use the Mitel Teleworker Solution and 25 per cent of our legal advisors are based at home. The snow has not effected business and we can carry on as normal and are not suffering any downtime. The Teleworker Solution has also enabled us to retain and recruit the industry’s best legal advisors and professionals allowing us to offer them a fluid experience working from home, without compromising the company’s requirements and business processes,” says Toby J Clarke, Group IT Director, Abbey Legal.