Companies all over the country are sending their workforce home to work and they are loving it! Why is this so? Well, employees don’t like spending 10% of their time on the roads. And research is proving that employees are more productive and happier when they are allowed to work from home.
Why? A happier and more productive workforce is why!
In March, Addison-based Regus released a survey of 11,000 corporations in 15 countries that found that 59 percent of those surveyed said “working fewer days in the office” and setting up shop at home or in remote workplaces would make a positive impact on retaining staff. The average commute time for those surveyed was 22.6 minutes. About 19.3 percent of those surveyed have to spend 30 minutes to an hour on the road. In addition, it takes about 5.4 percent of those surveyed one to two hours to get to work, Regus reported.
About 16 percent of the respondents said they considered leaving a job in the last year because of longer commute times.
What is a Virtual Company?
- A virtual company blends home and work to gain efficiencies in both. There is NO office space, and all employees work at an alternate location.
- Workers can work from home or anywhere else as long as they have the tools they need to communicate and collaborate.
- Office expenses are low, while the user’s professionalism retains the image of a traditional, high-cost office.
- A virtual company can reduce their environmental impact, as well as the personal negatives of a daily commute.
- Virtual company clientele have the flexibility to match expenses with revenue fluctuations immediately, as the costs are usually variable.
- A virtual company can allow for low-cost expansion with no long-term commitments. Using a virtual receptionist or auto attendent eliminates the need for a full-time secretary, and with no long term lease on office space, the company is infinitely more flexible.
How can a VoIP hosted PBX help you go virtual?
Virtual Assistant – A virtual receptionist consists of a professional greeting and routing system. When someone calls your toll free or direct number(s) they get a professional greeting:
‘Thank you for calling XYZ Corporation. If you know the extension for the person you are trying to reach, you can dial that at anytime.For sales press 1, for billing press2, for technical support press3, for our dial by name directory press 4. To hear this message again, press 8.’
Call Routing – Calls are then routed to the appropriate department (which can consist of any number of extensions), or to an extension. An extension can be routed anywhere as well. Say you want your calls to try your work phone, your cell phone and your home phone either simultaneously or one at a time. You can set that up right in your Press8 Control Center.
Conference Calling – At anytime in your Control Center you can setup a conference call. Press8hosted PBX sends out invites and reminders with a pin number to use to login to the conference call. This feature is a valuable tool for a virtual office environment for company meetings, or for customer calls.
Voicemail to Email – When your calls are routed to the phones you specify, and there is no answer, the call goes to a professional voicemail. Press8 holds that voicemail in your Control Center which you can access on the Web, or you can have all your voicemails sent to your email for you to read at anytime using Outlook or using your Smartphone.
Big Business Sound – No matter where you and your employees are working, your Press8 phone system makes a good impression.
Call Recording & Reporting – You can record calls, have them emailed to you
Other great online tools include:
Yammer.com – an office-cooler type program that helps employees keep that connection with their peers
Centraldesktop.com – to share office files, notes, calendars
Spark.com – a free secure IM software to communicating all day with each other
