Increased Productivity Due to Telecommuting

In the global networked economy, work is performed everywhere, at any time and any place. That said, what are the operational benefits? Cisco set out to evaluate the social, economic and environmental impacts associated with allowing and actively enabling employees to telecommute.

Cisco announced the findings of its Teleworker Survey, an in-depth study of almost 2,000 company employees. The study, conducted to evaluate the social, economic and environmental impacts associated with telecommuting at Cisco, revealed that a majority of respondents experienced a significant increase in work-life flexibility, productivity and overall satisfaction as a result of their ability to work remotely.

Create a Sound Telecommuting Strategy
As the modern workforce continues to evolve and globalize, more companies are evaluating a telecommuting strategy to save costs and lower carbon emissions as well as to retain top talent.

For these companies, Cisco's survey highlights the gains that a sound telecommuting strategy provides for employees and employers alike.

Cisco is achieving new levels of efficiency and effectiveness by enabling people to work together no matter where they are located. In fact, according to Cisco's Internet Business Services Group, the company's global strategic consulting arm, the company has generated an estimated annual savings of $277 million in productivity by allowing employees to telecommute and telework.

Examples of Connectivity Solution Adoption
In addition, with the steady adoption of enterprise-class remote connectivity solutions like Cisco Virtual Office, the recently announced Cisco OfficeExtend, and virtual collaboration tools like Cisco WebEx, Cisco anticipates that employees and employers will continue to see a rise in the benefits associated with telecommuting.

Highlights from the study include the following:

• Approximately 69 percent of the employees surveyed cited higher productivity when working remote, and 75 percent of those surveyed said the timeliness of their work improved.
• By telecommuting, 83 percent of employees said their ability to communicate and collaborate with co-workers was the same as, if not better than, it was when working on-site.
• 67 percent of survey respondents said their overall work quality improved when telecommuting.
• An improved quality of life through telecommuting was cited by 80 percent of survey respondents.
• Telecommuting can also lead to a higher employee retention rate, as more than 91 percent of respondents say telecommuting is somewhat or very important to their overall satisfaction.
  

How can your business benefit from these key insights? Bring your people and information together to reduce decision times and accelerate innovation. Develop a strategy to enable open, secure, adaptable enterprise collaboration that improves your company's creativity and velocity.

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How Web-Based Training Delivers Business Impact

There's a touchy little secret about call centers: their employee turnover is atrocious; it can reach as high as 26 percent per year, according to one expert's estimates. As a result, companies strive to ease the stress of their customer service agents.

Continental Airlines, the fourth largest airline in the U.S. with $14 billion in revenues, realized that by deploying VoIP technology with personal computers, it could route reservations calls to agents' homes. This not only reduced the need for call center real estate, but it also gives reservations agents the ability to both telecommute and time-shift their work. Today, almost 1,100 agents work at home.

Turning To Videoconferencing Technology
Unfortunately, even good ideas sometimes have bad side effects. Continental found that they could easily keep employees up-to-date on staff issues with regular teleconferences. But for training and evaluations -- activities that required visual interaction -- agents still had to get into their cars and drive to a call center location.

Continental solved the problem by turning to technology a second time, implementing the WebEx hosted system for improving communications with its remote employees. By using hosted WebEx Meeting Center sessions, supervisors can easily update small groups of employees on policy or process changes. They can also schedule one-on-one training sessions.

"Using WebEx, supervisors share their desktops to show agents how to use a specific feature on our reservation program," says Leslie Colbert, Continental's director of training and communication. "WebEx gives all of our agents direct and frequent contact with management."

Saving Time and Fuel
Continental estimates that it's saving more than 10 million miles of car travel, 9 million pounds of emissions, and about 500,000 gallons of fuel annually. The airline is also implementing WebEx eLearning for new hires.

Overall, it's benefiting both internally and externally. "WebEx helped us create an incredible remote worker program which aids us in our recruiting practices," says Colbert. "Our telecommuting program is now a huge draw for potential hires."

That's a double advantage for Continental. At the same time it's increasing employee satisfaction, it's also gaining a better reputation for being environmentally sensitive.

If you haven't already embraced Web collaboration tools in your organization, consider it as an appropriate New Years resolution to boost your team's productivity.

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Managed Services: Safe At Home

As more businesses allow employees to work from home, a new IT challenge -- and opportunity -- arises. It's impossible for employers to offer on-site, full-time tech support to all of their stay-at-home workers. But the rise of managed services -- including remote monitoring and pro-active administration -- can bring order to these highly distributed workplaces.

The trend toward telecommuting is undeniable. More than 40 percent of American and Canadian companies let their employees telework, according to WorldatWork, a global HR association. As energy prices continue to fluctuate and businesses increasingly focus on environmental issues, the march toward telecommuting will surely accelerate.

Home Networks Become Complex
As a small business owner myself, my home office includes a network with multiple nodes -- three PCs running a mix of Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP; and my trusted MacBook Pro running Max OS X.

Now, multiply that IT complexity across hundreds of home offices and you'll understand why many small, midsize and even large organizations struggle to keep their home-based employees online and productive.

That's where managed services enter the picture. Increasingly, managed service providers (MSPs) and VARs (value-added resellers) use remote monitoring and administration tools to troubleshoot small and mid-size business networks.

The New Executive Suite
The managed services trend is now spilling over into the home market, where entrepreneurs and executives now demand the same level of IT service and support that they experience within corporate offices.

Small business owners and midsize business executives need to rethink their IT outsourcing strategies. In fact, all IT projects and network administration decisions must now include the extended enterprise -- including home offices and mobile devices.

The old corporate network as we know it is dead. The clear line between your enterprise and your employees' homes are gone. Going forward you need an IT architecture that blankets all of your employees -- regardless of where they're working.

Make Your Move for 2009
As you negotiate IT service contracts for 2009, ask your IT consultants and integrators how they're addressing the growing trend toward stay-at-home workers.

And make sure your IT contracts for patch management, security, storage and other automated services cover those telecommuters.

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