Remote employees are no longer a future project – they are a reality
for the last two decades. Despite an abundance of scepticism (and a few
outright bans like Yahoo), researchers keep finding that remote workers
are more productive, less likely to quit, and generally better at their
jobs. While some still find it hard to cut their ties to the office, the
trend toward more remote work is clear. You can save commuting time and
costs and spend with a family instead.
Let’s look at remote worker average profile. He or she is 42 years old on average, at least college educated, payslip is showing more than £45K salary and head count at the company is above 100 employees. There are a lot of exclusions of course and it depends more on the sector plus business specifics.
There is a specific kind of a remote worker and this is Road Warrior.
We have been all on odd conference call with the guy or gal sprinting
through an airport terminal or parked on the side of a noisy free-way.
The road warrior is rarely ever in one place for long but constantly on
the move visiting prospects and clients, inspecting sites or attending
seminars in different cities, connecting from whichever device is
handiest in the moment – laptop, tablet, smartphone or all of the above.
From a CIO’s perspective, however, the benefits of remote work are not quite as obvious. Those remote workers are saving the company quite a lot when it comes to the real estate, utilities, and other overhead costs associated with a physical office. But CIO who look at the cost per employee may actually see a higher bill when workers are outside the office. It is true IT expenditures could be a little bit higher.
Everyone who works from home requires an end user device as computer, tablet or mobile, after all. Those devices can’t be quickly and easily supported when they’re dispersed. Remote workers can’t just pop into their neighbour’s cubicle for some impromptu support, although that may be an advantage for beleaguered IT-savvy workers.
Most issues and support requests can still be dealt with remotely in many instances, particularly as more and more applications are being moved to the cloud. Remote workplaces also have to cope with loss of equipment. The devices of remote workers are more likely to get lost in transit or stolen from coffee houses than their in-office counterparts. The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend is accelerating quickly and maintenance cost is reduced for the end user devices as long as they are able to access cloud based applications.
Infrastructure quality can also be an issue. In an office, IT operations can assure the same standards, or at least create a solid baseline that everyone can count on. But out in the wild, there’s a huge difference in what infrastructure employees are plugging into. Remote workers may be relying on shared Wi-Fi or are using blazingly fast connections of mobile operators. A dispersed IT infrastructure has to allow for both possibilities.
There’s also an increased cost for keeping remote workers connected to each other. A dispersed workforce means that more money goes to remote meeting technologies – negating at least some of the gain from getting rid of those physical conference rooms.
Do these potential disadvantages add up to the end of the remote workplace? Not really, even the answer isn’t very clear in the end. However remote workers can do the job around the globe/clock and this includes low cost destinations at any time around the clock.
Calculating the costs and benefits of a remote workplace isn’t necessarily about comparing hard numbers. The impact of remote work on employee morale, retention, and productivity can be difficult to measure against stolen computers and the cost of a videoconferencing system. The company expansion and business growth acceleration powered by remote workplace may be just as important as overhead introduced by more complex technical architecture. You can grow your business as a multinational company easily without burden of physical offices and without limits of your current physical location simply by relying on technologies.
Want your office(s) to work remotely, but not sure how you can make it work? We can help.
Let’s look at remote worker average profile. He or she is 42 years old on average, at least college educated, payslip is showing more than £45K salary and head count at the company is above 100 employees. There are a lot of exclusions of course and it depends more on the sector plus business specifics.
From a CIO’s perspective, however, the benefits of remote work are not quite as obvious. Those remote workers are saving the company quite a lot when it comes to the real estate, utilities, and other overhead costs associated with a physical office. But CIO who look at the cost per employee may actually see a higher bill when workers are outside the office. It is true IT expenditures could be a little bit higher.
Everyone who works from home requires an end user device as computer, tablet or mobile, after all. Those devices can’t be quickly and easily supported when they’re dispersed. Remote workers can’t just pop into their neighbour’s cubicle for some impromptu support, although that may be an advantage for beleaguered IT-savvy workers.
Most issues and support requests can still be dealt with remotely in many instances, particularly as more and more applications are being moved to the cloud. Remote workplaces also have to cope with loss of equipment. The devices of remote workers are more likely to get lost in transit or stolen from coffee houses than their in-office counterparts. The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend is accelerating quickly and maintenance cost is reduced for the end user devices as long as they are able to access cloud based applications.
Infrastructure quality can also be an issue. In an office, IT operations can assure the same standards, or at least create a solid baseline that everyone can count on. But out in the wild, there’s a huge difference in what infrastructure employees are plugging into. Remote workers may be relying on shared Wi-Fi or are using blazingly fast connections of mobile operators. A dispersed IT infrastructure has to allow for both possibilities.
There’s also an increased cost for keeping remote workers connected to each other. A dispersed workforce means that more money goes to remote meeting technologies – negating at least some of the gain from getting rid of those physical conference rooms.
Do these potential disadvantages add up to the end of the remote workplace? Not really, even the answer isn’t very clear in the end. However remote workers can do the job around the globe/clock and this includes low cost destinations at any time around the clock.
Calculating the costs and benefits of a remote workplace isn’t necessarily about comparing hard numbers. The impact of remote work on employee morale, retention, and productivity can be difficult to measure against stolen computers and the cost of a videoconferencing system. The company expansion and business growth acceleration powered by remote workplace may be just as important as overhead introduced by more complex technical architecture. You can grow your business as a multinational company easily without burden of physical offices and without limits of your current physical location simply by relying on technologies.
Want your office(s) to work remotely, but not sure how you can make it work? We can help.
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