Come strikes or bad weather, go remote

Categories: Tech News

The possibility of rail strikes serve as a stark reminder to companies to invest in remote working solutions.

Thankfully, the strikes threatened by the rail unions in early June were called off but there could always be industrial action in the future – and no one’s ruling out bad weather stopping trains and buses from running.

Many employees in the South East rely on public transport to get to work and if it’s badly disrupted in any way, productivity plummets.

In this day and age it doesn’t have to be a concern because it’s now easier than ever to keep people working from home.

Your IT consultant can provide a robust and secure solution that gives employees remote access to emails and to your main company admin system. It will also support voice calls using VOIP telephony so your staff can still use their office phone number and be available when customers call.

How much is remote working?

The installation cost per employee is relatively low. It works out as a very small proportion of your annual employee wage bill.

Gary Jowett from the IT consultants CNC in Brighton explains: “Say your company employs 15 people at £22,000 each a year, the cost to your company of a transport strike or other disruption in terms of lost productivity is far greater than the cost of introducing a remote solution for every member of staff.”

IT providers advise businesses to plan ahead and ensure the remote working is up and running well before the threat of any disruption looms on the horizon.

And don’t think of it as money spent which isn’t being put to good use immediately. There’s also a daily benefit to making your workforce more flexible.

Having remote working in place also helps when employees need to stay at home for any reason other than sickness. This gives you greater access to your pool of talented employees and may help you retain the most valuable people.

Are London businesses prepared?

The frightening fact is that there are still many companies in London who aren’t prepared for strikes. They should be because their workforce relies heavily on public transport. Unfortunately, it often takes the costly experience of strikes or bad weather to serve as a wake-up call after the event.

It’s better to have remote working and other contingency measures in place. Quite apart from maintaining workforce productivity it also ticks all the right boxes when procurers from large organisations consider buying your services.