Evolving your distributed workforce (Part 1): Boost productivity and keep control of costs

Every business has a different journey towards the technology that’s right for them. But wherever your business is on that journey, you’re likely to have experienced a significant twist in the road over the last few months.

As remote working has become the norm, many of us have come to realise it really is here to stay. So, what could have been temporary tech fixes in March now need to become rather longer-term solutions.

Your eventual aim might be to improve productivity, drive down costs or enhance collaboration – or potentially a combination of these.

Whatever your aims, how can you move from coping with the initial changes associated with the leap into remote working and put the right technology in place on a more permanent basis? And how can it happen without incurring significant costs for your business or disruption for employees who are scattered across different locations?

In part one of this blog, we’ll look at some of the issues and solutions to consider, with more to come in part two.

Keep employees connected

We start with staff connectivity and specifically the remote working environment and how it can cause an impact.

Whilst an employee could have access to the technology they need, if WiFi isn’t reliable at their home or elsewhere outside the office, it’s going to result in frustration and a loss of productivity.

This clearly isn’t sustainable in the longer term, so it’s worth exploring hardware solutions that can help.

For example, MiFi devices are small, portable wireless devices that work in a similar way to a home broadband router, instead of tapping into a 4G or 3G network to create an ‘ad-hoc’ network. Users can connect multiple devices to it, and it’s very easy to set up.

And in a similar vein, Vodafone’s Gigacube allows employees to seamlessly connect their devices to a portable WiFi router, giving instant and high-speed access to the internet without the additional hassle of installation.

Keep call costs down

While employees are working remotely, they might also be using their own devices which may bring its own challenges to the mix – how Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) impacts upon data usage.

In many ways, BYOD makes perfect sense, allowing employees to be on personal contracts while performing business tasks. However, there are risks that need to be understood and managed over the longer term.

Unexpected charges are one such threat, and they can be significant, particularly if an employee has to use their own device (and tariff) while travelling.

The Adam Phones Portal can help to overcome this challenge by giving you visibility of cost and usage within your business, enabling you to see what your organisation is spending almost as it happens.

Dealing with data usage

Managing mobile data is also crucial to keeping costs down. With employees having access to data-hungry apps and streaming services, you need a way to effectively monitor and act upon what’s happening.

Our Wandera service gives you the power to do so by configuring and deploying app blocking policies, controlling data usage by location and creating custom notifications for mobile data usage.

Finally, if you’re looking to increase business maturity, take a look at your tariffs. You might wish to consider switching to the right business grade tariff and ideally one that’s bespoke to your organisation and its needs.

We can build the most appropriate tariffs for you, comprehensively detailing your contractual arrangements, aligning them to your business objectives and accurately modelling the savings and service benefits of the solutions we recommend. And at the same time, your employees can look forward to the flexibility to conduct business – wherever they are.

Find out more

To find out more about how Adam Phones can help your business move to a more permanent remote working solution, call us on freephone 0800 123 000.

Click here to read the second part of our evolving workforce series, the benefits of cost-effective collaboration and security.