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18 Reasons for Virtual Working
Check which of the following scenarios you recognize – then ask yourself how you can apply them to improve your own business. Contact us to add to the list or suggest different priorities!
- Increase staff output immediately by reducing dead time for:
- Commuting
- Business travel
- Meet demand for more office space without:
- Disruption
- Removal
- Additional real estate
- Reduce business travel costs.
- Reduce pressure on in-house facilities, e.g. staff restaurant, car parking, desk space.
- Reduce facility costs, e.g. heating, cleaning.
- Improve Business Continuity in exceptional circumstances:
- Epidemic, preventing key employees coming to workplace, e.g. Swine Flu, Avian Flu etc.
- Travel impossible, e.g. Volcano eruption, security attacks or threats, snowstorms, tornados etc.
- Increase effective salary by reducing employees’ personal costs:
- Commuting
- Car
- Business attire
- Dry cleaning.
- Retain existing skilled staff despite personal constraints
- Illness, accident
- Recuperation, convalescence
- Family removal to distant location
- Young children
- Increase engagement and loyalty of existing labor force.
- Engage remote staff resources, despite their distant geographic location.
- Increase competitiveness in the labor market, by offering flexible working.
- Improve the choice for recruitment by increasing the catchment area.
- Engage staff with alternative working hours and/ or languages.
- Retain access to the skills and experience of retiring staff over an extended period.
- Reduce financial shock to retirees by permitting continued earning.
- Engage committed workers from otherwise disadvantaged groups:
- disabled
- housebound
- Achieve pollution reductions.
- Improve your green image.
For Information about how Scatterwork® can help you
Sign up for a FREE no-obligation consultation using the form on the left, or use any of the available methods to contact us to discuss your needs.
What is Virtual Working?
Pitfalls
Some of the factors which reduce the benefits of Virtual Working include:
- Lack of trust, either between the management and team or among team members who do not know each other face to face.
- Not having the task/project well thought out and articulated.
- Not identifying specific performance metrics.
- Not being clear with the chosen virtual team about what the task/project is.
- Not being clear about the time allotted for project.
- Not determining the funding source for an adequate budget.
- Not assigning an in-house person to be responsible for communicating with the virtual team.
- Not setting milestones to review project/task along the way.
- Changing direction of the task/project mid-stream.
- Not doing due diligence in the selection of the virtual team.
- Lack of communication with the virtual team.
- Not utilizing the right IT tools so the team is connected.
- Not bringing the in house team and the virtual team together through communication and mutual teamwork.
- Not communicating to in-house employees that virtual team work is not to take away in- house jobs but to strengthen the company as a whole, including their jobs and the company’s ability to pay their salaries.
- Management resistance to not having their team under one roof.
We can list probably a hundred more obstacles. The thing to realize is that the obstacles can be overcome and companies both large and small are working to make that happen.
Why are these methods spreading so fast?
Very worthwhile business improvements are possible while the investments required are relatively modest, which is ideal particularly in challenging economic times. The investments leverage from new combinations of mature social developments and technological innovations.
How big is the change?
The revolution in working methods is similar to those which occurred when mobile telephones or internet were first introduced.
Why now?
Since 2008, the proportion of population with access to broadband internet in all the “old world” economies from USA to Japan to the European Union exceeds 20%, a critical mass for the adoption of new methods.
Collaboration Methods also contribute directly to meeting other major challenges, such as reduction of CO2 emissions and global warming.
For Information about how Scatterwork® can help you
Sign up for a FREE no-obligation consultation using the form on the left, or use any of the available methods to contact us to discuss your needs.
Business Cases
Experience with the virtual workplace is building up around the globe, as can be seen from these 3rd party reports:
Sun Microsystems
“…Sun is targeting $100 million in annual savings due to reduced real estate costs and improved productivity…”
Virginia Telework Day
“…turnover has dropped…from 57 percent in 2007 to only 4.8 percent so far [Sept. 2009] this year.”
Delta Airlines
“…some Reservations Centre employees will shift from traditional to teleworking roles. This will increase our number of teleworking employees from 300 to 800 by the end of 2010.”
ABC News: The Future of the Workplace
For Information about how Scatterwork® can help you
Sign up for a FREE no-obligation consultation using the form on the left, or use any of the available methods to contact us to discuss your needs.
