TelePacific Insight: TeleCommunications Blog

The recent Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas showcased all the latest (and future) gadgets, electronics and perpetual credit card payments. I didn’t know, until they announced it at CES, that I couldn’t live another moment without a 3D television in my home. How did I manage to survive all my life without feeling like the ShamWow guy was right in my living room, squeezing water right onto my coffee table? There was also the cool laptop with a clear, transparent screen. Now I’ll be able to safely work on my emails and spreadsheets while driving…since I’ll be able to see traffic right through the see-through screen! The marvels of not-so-well-thought-out technology!

 All the new gadgets are pretty cool, but I won’t be fully satisfied until they make good on the decades-ago promise of jetpacks. For generations we’ve been promised a world where people go grocery shopping on jetpacks, commute to work on jetpacks and maybe even walk our jetpack-wearing dogs on jetpacks. I want my jetpack!

 Until jetpacks become a reality, we’re left with 3D infomercials, motion-sensing Xbox game systems and multi-hundred dollar machines to read $10 books. Nothing much there to help the business community. But fortunately you don’t have to rely on bleeding-edge-see-through-3D-motion-sensing-abracadabra-futuristic technology to help your business. There is great technology readily available to help increase employee productivity and effectiveness…even in an age without jetpacks.

Consider shifting to a remote workforce—that’s when your employees, absent jetpacks, avoid the maddening traffic and resulting stress and instead work effectively and efficiently from home. There are a multitude of benefits to employing a virtual workforce, including reduced costs for office space, ease of accommodating differing schedules and the ability to bring together a team with broad knowledge and experience (and no relocation). On top of that, it can even result in a more “ecologically-friendly” workforce with less commuting (pollution) and less paper usage (resource conservation).

But before you agree to the concept of a virtual workforce faster than you picked up the phone and ordered those ShamWows, take a moment to consider some of the challenges a remote workforce poses, as well as some of the steps you can take to overcome those challenges. Some challenges are obvious, such as the importance of setting and checking in on goals; some may not be so obvious, such as the importance of remote workers visiting the office on a regular basis to stay connected with co-workers. Whether your company has already deployed a virtual workforce or is starting to explore options for doing so, here are some things to consider:

• Consider what job roles are appropriate for working remotely and what are not. Some things are still best done by a team working in the same location.
• Detail the parameters of the working arrangement. During what hours are employees expected to be available? How quickly are they expected to respond to email or phone calls?
• Ensure that remote employees have ample opportunities to interact with each other and those back at the office. Have them call in to team meetings, have them come into the office on a regular basis and include them in work-related social activities. The face time and interaction they have with the rest of the team will lead to a more productive relationship.
• Get more remote workforce tips and things to consider here.

Technology can make many of these challenges easier to overcome (why technology hasn’t perfected the jetpack, we’ll never know). There is software available to help you monitor when and for how long employees are logged on to your server/system; conference call services and online web meetings to keep the team working together; email and other online communication tools to make it easier to stay in constant contact and the coolest of all—you can scare your employees by appearing on their 3D television and fooling them into thinking that you’re there watching them work.

TelePacific can help you get started with your remote workforce…or if you’ve already started one, perhaps we can help you enhance it and make it more effective. TelePacific’s 1Net IP-VPN allows employees secure remote access to your servers, email and other company systems through a simple web interface, so they always have the work files they need to be productive.

And when they want to discuss those documents with a group of team members or with the client, they can use Conference Central. Conference Central is a reservation-less audio conference service that is easy-to-use, flexible and secure. You can set up a sub-account for every employee, and every conference host is provided with a dedicated access number and a suite of user-friendly features.

And if you have some clients who are not quite up to speed with the latest technology, you can use TelePacific’s Fax Central, which provides you with a private fax number so you can receive and view fax documents as electronic attachments in your email inbox. You can access faxes wherever you can access your email, and you can even forward them as email attachments—saving paper and saving time.

With all these out-of-office work tools, maybe next year you’ll be all set up to work productively while you’re in Las Vegas enjoying CES…hopefully at the product launch for the new commuter jetpack.