As Modern workplace evangelists, we are currently working with Progressive Organisations who see the benefit of allowing their employees to work remotely. In a recent engagement we found that due to rising costs of renting space and the associated costs of having employees at an office, organisations are now looking at ways to be more flexible. Second-line employees were allowed to stay at home and work from home. Connectivity was the employee’s responsibility and a conducive working environment (No dogs barking) was needed to qualify for the programme. A notebook, additional screens, a UPS and a VOIP phone was provided by the employee so that the office could be extended to those who qualified for the pilot programme.

With Microsoft 365 users are able to work remotely as if they were at the office. Collaborative tools such as Microsoft Teams and SharePoint was also used extensively to ensure the same level of productivity and experience for remote workers as they would have at the Office. By doing so the employees in the test phase were naturally excited to have the flexibility to work from home, work in there most comfortable clothes and with the benefits of not spending additional money on rising petrol costs commuting to the office. The major win for these users was also the ability to no longer sit in traffic. Over the 3 month period of the trial, the employees working from home were carefully managed and their productivity spiked. Employee loyalty increased and the costs of petrol were negated in favour of the additional connectivity spend. At first, employees would meet once a week at the Office to track progress but over the period of 3 months, these meetings were held over Microsoft Teams which is also there PABX and conferencing solution.

The employer was able to hire more first-line workers without needing to expend on additional rental space whilst having a motivated second line employee determined to make it work to their benefit. As systems administrators, we have the ability to manage the notebook and Cell phones using Microsoft Intune as part of the Enterprise mobility suite in Microsoft 365. It has proved that you could still have security and management of these assets without it being on the local network. Working in the cloud using Microsoft 365 proves that, users can work anywhere, anytime from any device. In today’s world, it’s about the results you can achieve as an employee, not the eyeballs sitting at the office at a desk.  If you are wanting to move your workforce to work remotely, call us to discuss the prerequisites needed to make IT happen for your business.