Support Your Remote Workers and Telecommuters with a VOIP Hosted PBX
For several decades executives have recognized the significant cost and productivity advantages associated with remote workers. In the 80s and 90s, the expense of providing full support and integration of telecommuters into the corporate environment offset much of the projected cost advantages.
Today, with the high penetration of broadband in the home coupled with advances in internet-based telecommunications systems such as Hosted PBX solutions, migrating employees from office workers to remote workers is not only cost-effective, it has also become a high priority with a large percentage of companies. Getting employees out of the office workspace and into their home office workspace can yield immediate savings according to a study by the International Telework Association and Council. If you walk into almost any business office, you can generally find empty desks. An empty desk is a sure sign that you have a remote worker candidate. The study by the Telework Association found that a company could save about $10,000 per year for each recovered desk space.
Businesses with remote worker initiatives also benefit from increased productivity and improved employee satisfaction. The European Union’s ‘SusTel’ (Sustainable Teleworking) study, the largest European investigation to date into the impact of remote working, was conducted between 2002 and 2004 in five European countries. The study revealed that two-thirds of remote workers felt they achieved higher productivity, and that the quality of their work had improved. The study also showed that absenteeism was reduced by 70%. In Germany, 94% of BMW’s remote workers reported increased job satisfaction, and in the UK, around 90% of remote workers said they had an improved quality of life despite working longer hours.
Telecommunications is an important ingredient in the creation of a successful remote workforce. Most experts agree that the best system to support a remote worker environment is a VOIP Hosted PBX. This system’s architecture allows geographically separated employees to work together as if they were in the same physical workspace. A VOIP Hosted PBX breaks down the barriers of isolation and enhances the sense of belonging to one corporate culture, and also serves as an enabler to promote teamwork and cooperation.
In addition to hard dollar savings, increased productivity, and enhanced job satisfaction, the business case for deploying a remote workforce becomes almost insurmountable when you also consider that telecommunications expenses drop by about 40% when a traditional PBX is replaced with a VoIP Hosted PBX.
For businesses thinking about remote workers, the best departmental candidates for a VOIP Hosted PBX supported remote workforce are: Sales, marketing, and call center staff.
VOIP Hosted PBX Call Center is a powerful tool that can tie together employees across multiple locations under one unified call center. Incoming calls are held in queue and routed to the next available agent – regardless of their geographical location. Nightly reporting is available on both the agent and overall group level showing average hold time, average time spent per call, number of minutes an agent was logged in and logged out, plus other management features.
Advanced VOIP Hosted PBX features that surpass those available on a traditional PBX also support each remote worker. These features include such things as a custom auto attendant, unlimited local calling, long distance minutes, directory Assistance calls and reserved DID phones numbers. All remote workers receive their own phone number so callers don’t have to worry about busy signals or getting an outside line. Each remote worker on a Hosted PBX system also receives advanced calling features like simultaneous ring, Find-Me/ Follow-Me, Click-to-Call computer-assisted phone handling, and Outlook Integration.
Even though most companies initially begin investigating a remote workforce initiative in order to generate cost savings and rely upon ROI as the pivotal decision point, in reality it is the soft dollar benefits created by a Hosted PBX solution that ultimately generate the greatest expense reduction over the life-cycle of their investment. The VoIP Hosted PBX solution integrates widely diverse remote workers into a seamless, supervision-friendly work environment that is comparable to that of workers collocated in the same office space or building.
If you are seriously considering a remote workforce, or if you are merely looking for a better way to integrate existing remote workers into your business environment, then you should definitely investigate the advantages offered by a VoIP Hosted PBX solution.
Bill Casey is the VP of Marketing for Reignmaker Communications, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Reignmaker has over 11,000 business VoIP Hosted PBX installations and provides true end-to-end support