Save money – staff working from home

Lancaster’s only 24/7 I.T support service, Black Bear IT Solutions explains how you can increase business efficiency, make your staff happier and reduce your costs.

Reduce costs, increase business efficiency and make your staff happier! Can this really be done? Of course it can, but first you need to think of what are the issues stopping your business from growing; lack of office space, lack of funds, can’t find the right staff, IT or Telecoms letting you down? Then you need to think about why you make your staff come to work, why don’t you let them work from home?

Home or “remote” working resolves many issues, no traveling time or costs; more flexibility for staff working hours, less reliance on expensive office suites and much more. Large companies have embraced this, but you probably don’t realise this as the excellent telecoms and IT infrastructure means you have no idea they are not in the office! We have clients whose owners or senior managers spend time in other countries, they work as if they are in their offices in Lancaster.

Traditionally home working meant using mobile phones and making sure you saved all your work to a memory stick. Now, with hosted servers and phone systems, all you need is a basic computer and a broadband connection, which most of us have at home already. The employer just needs to supply a simple phone which is joined to the company’s hosted phone system and a hosted server login (which any Windows PC can access). Suddenly every home is now part of the company’s office phone and server system, all for around £100!

Now staff can be working from anywhere and all the stress and time of the daily commute is just more time to work!

Home working isn’t for everyone, there are obvious boundaries, but it is something every company should consider. Especially as we see travel costs, energy costs and childcare costs increasing all the time. Staff who feel they are benefiting from working for a company, be that less travel costs, more flexibility or shorter working days (no travelling time) are more likely to stay with a company and quite possibly be more motivated.

One final point, during the floods of 2015 none of our hosted servers or phone systems were down. Many employees who were living outside of the flooded areas still had power and broadband, so they were still working. For many businesses that advantage could have been the difference between success and failure.

Black Bear IT Solutions are specialists in hosted servers and telecom systems. They support many well-known companies in Lancashire and Cumbria, providing solutions for small and large companies at excellent value for money. Why not let them make your business more profitable in 2017