Flexible working: where business and mobile collide

Have you heard about flexible working? Perhaps you prefer your staff to work from the office. Nobody wants their employees becoming lazy outside of the formal working environment and relaxing at home. But don’t give up on the idea just yet – flexible working holds a whole range of benefits for businesses and employees alike. This is all made possible using business software which is designed to work from all devices in any location.

Flexible working via mobile devices ultimately allows for better time management. It gives staff the opportunity to utilise their commuting time and work to their strengths, working within other commitments and individual energy patterns. In fact, 70% of managers working flexibly are more productive. Despite managers worrying that employees could be wasting time, 39% of remote workers have been found to work longer hours when working flexibly.

In business, cost is always a factor to consider. However the average commuting cost per person in a year in London is £520. If you currently finance employee travel expenses, this could have a potentially huge impact on the amount you save, even by providing a few days of flexible working to employees each month. 63% of businesses also see an increase in revenue that is caused directly by flexible working practices which increase employee productivity

Giving employees the option to work flexibly is likely to decrease your staff turnover since it works around the individual lives of employees, allowing them to work at their best. It can give employees increased job satisfaction, better morale and company loyalty. Again, this can decrease the costs which go hand-in-hand with employee turnover, which can range from anything from 40% to 400% of the annual salary of that position in the company.

Flexible working is only possible because of business software which supports it. It needs to allow for interaction with customers wherever you are. This software provides the benefits listed above including saving money, and giving working flexibility to staff, which could not be otherwise achieved.

Accessing business applications via mobile devices are completed using cloud based software. It enables employees to see and use business applications from any geographic location, just as they would be able to in the office, giving them extra elasticity in their working. Many businesses encourage a “bring your own device” scheme which permits staff members to work from their own personal mobile, laptop, tablet or home PC.

VDI, or virtual desktop is an infrastructure solution which allows employees to access their office desktop on the go, using a virtual machine in the cloud. They can work on this desktop in real time from their own device, all of which is highly secure. Critical and sensitive data is protected and access can be withdrawn at any point.

Certain software will also be optimised for mobile/tablet use, using a custom layout for better viewing and ease of use. This means that whatever device employees are working from, they will be able to clearly access data and work productively wherever they are. They can make use of faster connectivity such as 4G which is now widely available, to increase their level of productivity.

If you don’t currently give staff the option of flexible working, it should be something that you are willing to at least consider. Perhaps it could be just the step you need to happy and committed employees.

If you want to find out more about business software to enable flexible working using mobile devices then have a chat with one of the Geeks today.