A briefing with the boss in New York Monday morning… A presentation to prospective clients in Hong Kong Monday evening… (and last-minute revisions immediately beforehand with colleagues on the West Coast).

 

Thanks in part to the proliferation of unified communications (UC) technologies, all of these interactions can take place live and seamlessly — be it from a home office in Idaho, a coffee shop in Italy, or a hotel in Iceland. Technological advances, combined with an ever-evolving corporate culture, are making teleworking an even greater reality. With companies including Apple, AT&T (News - Alert), HP, Sun and Xerox instituting teleworking programs, the benefits of such arrangements are becoming widely acknowledged across the globe.

 

Never before have an organization’s people been given the ability to connect, communicate and collaborate anytime, anywhere, as with UC. With presence applications displaying real-time status indicators, voicemail and email messages being pushed out to numerous devices, and the increased integration of calendaring and telephony, today’s UC users are better equipped to work from any location.

 

Consequently, organizations around the world and across industries are realizing the advantages of telecommuting. Historically these organizations have reaped benefits including reduced demand for centralized office space, a greater pool of employee talent, a boost in employee morale, less time lost to gridlock, and decreased financial and environmental commuting costs. With the advent of UC, those benefits are enhanced, and new ones — such as a truly integrated work force and exponentially more effective communication — are realized. In addition, the usual “negatives” associated with telecommuting — such as feelings of isolation, lost productivity and a lack of close interaction — are effectively nullified.

 

IT solutions provider Dimension Data recently released a survey detailing worldwide unified communications adoption, which included UC’s impact on flexible work environments (defined as work arrangements in which employees can telecommute, work from home or work when traveling). Responses were collected from 524 IT users — those using a personal computer in the workplace for more than 15 hours per week — and 390 IT managers in 13 countries across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.

 

The survey sought to answer questions including: What are the motivating factors behind flexi-working? Are certain regions more receptive than others to the adoption of flexible work schedules? And which technologies come into play when IT undertakes a mission to support telecommuters?

 

In many cases, identical questions were posed to managers and users, facilitating a comparison of their perspectives on UC and its ability to enable flexible working. These dual perspectives afford organizations insight into the opinions of both groups and help explain their various motivations.

 

According to IT managers, 56 percent of enterprises offer fully IT-supported flexible work environments, 15 percent offer flexi-work without IT support, and 29 percent do not offer flexi-work options at all. These stats are not consistent across the globe — due in part to differences in legislative frameworks, operational conditions, communications infrastructures and organizational roles in different countries — and rates of flexi-work adoption varied significantly.

 

The United States lags behind its European and Australian counterparts in this arena. In fact, only 55 of U.S. companies surveyed offer fully IT-supported flexible work environments, compared with much higher adoption rates in other regions of the world, with leading countries including France (75 percent of companies) and Switzerland (73 percent).

 

However, the survey showed the United States as the global leader in overall U.C. adoption (scoring 8.5 out of 10 on the unified communications adoption and maturity index) — which implies that it is not technology that slows U.S. flexi-work adoption. Instead, the discrepancy could be due in part to European laws requiring employers to be more flexible with employees’ work hours and requiring organizations to demonstrate compliance. U.S. companies, on the other hand, have no such regulatory framework and can therefore have more varied flex work policies.

 

The vast majority of U.S. companies seem to report an all-or-nothing scenario in terms of IT support and the enablement of flex-working. As stated, 55 percent offer fully IT-supported flexible work environments — however, only a small percentage (five percent) state they offer flexi-work without active IT support.

 

Other areas of the world, however, were more lax — IT managers in France reported that 15 percent of companies offer flexible working without active IT support. The percentage was identical in the United Kingdom, while 18 percent of Australian companies offer flexible working options sans IT assistance.

 

Of course, in order to have the most effective flex-work experience — and in order to reap the advantages of the UC technologies — it is recommended that companies enlist their IT departments to create supportable standards and bring cutting-edge technology benefits to corporate users. We will likely see an increasing number of U.S. organizations approach solution providers and integrators that can help them plan and build true flex-working environments so their employees can reap the full spectrum of benefits.

 

 

 

 

IT users and managers alike overwhelmingly believe that organizations offer flexible working and ubiquitous communication tools to increase and drive employee productivity (42 percent and 41 percent respectively). Other common motivations that IT users attributed to their companies included: keeping up with the advances in information and communication technologies (19 percent), boosting employee satisfaction (13 percent) and complying with work from home initiatives (11 percent).

 

IT managers, on the other hand, also viewed flexi-work as a strategy to boost employee retention (13 percent). The United States, Australia and Asia led all regions in this train of thought, with 23 percent of U.S. companies citing flexi-work’s ability to reduce churn/ increase employee satisfaction as their primary motivation for offering it. The view that flexible work schedules can attract and retain a wider and more talented array of employees is prompting these companies to abandon a strictly-in-the-office model.

 

 

 

 

The value of converged communications in facilitating a flexible work experience should not be underestimated. By combining voice, video and data traffic on to a single intelligent, ubiquitous IP network, organizations can now deliver any of these services to anyone on their network with very little extra effort. More than ever, today’s globally dispersed workforce needs reliable and secure communications tools to seamlessly interact in real-time with employees, customers and business partners. Armed with these new functionalities, companies improve efficiency and speed of communication, thereby becoming increasingly competitive.

 

Twenty-two percent of IT managers emphatically agreed, stating that converged communications positively impact their office’s flexi-work offerings, while 27 percent felt converged communications were poised to do so, if only their office offered these capabilities. Nine percent of respondents felt that converged communications did not have an impact on flexi-work — which is a call to action for service providers to work with end-user constituencies to demonstrate the benefits of UC technologies and change perception. In addition, as communication tools become further honed and communication networks increasingly sophisticated, the support for and benefits of converged communications tools will be more widely available.

 

 

 

 

IT users were more tepid in their opinions, with 24 percent stating that converged communications tools do not have a serious impact on flexible working. This gap reveals a lack of exposure to converged communications technologies and education on its benefits — another opportunity for solution providers and IT managers alike to institute change, offer educational programs/ training sessions and work to alter perception.

 

Some of the most prevalent communications technologies today — conventional fixed and mobile telephony, VPN access and Web-based e-mail — have also proven to be the biggest flexi-work enablers. Once an organization makes the decision to deploy these technologies, it should come as no surprise when that organization’s users take advantage of them when working remotely.

 

However, more advanced communications tools based on IP telephony and converged voice/data networks still have not gained widespread adoption, with VoIP, Web collaboration tools and videoconferencing yet to be deployed by more than 30 percent of companies. Despite the fact that these technologies have not made significant inroads, many organizations would like to offer them and plan to do so within the next two years. For example, 28 percent of IT managers reported they hope to offer VoIP telephony within the next two years, 25 percent said the same of softphones and 21 percent said the same of videoconferencing.

 

In addition, IT users detailed their use of various technologies for flexi-work and indicated tools they would like to adopt, with unified messaging (37 percent) and mobile push email (35 percent) topping the wish list. Among the technologies used most frequently were email (84 percent), fixed line telephony (75 percent), conventional mobile telephony (72 percent) and instant messenger/IM (46 percent). The popularity and widespread reliance on IM indicates that employees will use it for flexible working — even without IT’s blessing. IT is taking heed, well aware that if left unsanctioned, IM clients can pose security issues.

 

 

 

 

It’s clear that IP-based communications are poised to have a greater impact on flexi-work in the future. Dimension Data’s survey showed that mobile and fixed VoIP, along with softphones, are expected to experience aggressive growth rates. It should be noted, however, that these technologies — which are more cost-effective than conventional telephony — will facilitate and enhance the flex-working experience, rather than revolutionize it. Through the use of more disruptive technologies — including presence applications, Web collaboration tools and TelePresence, we’ll see a more drastic change in the flexi-work arena.

 

More than 50 percent of survey respondents believe that a fully flexible work environment will be routinely used in the market within five years. And in the near term, IT managers and workers agree that click-to-dial from the desktop, presence and VoIP will be routinely used in the corporate environment within two years.

 

Thus, with momentum and enthusiasm for teleworking arrangements on the rise, unified communications technologies have the opportunity to make a significant impact — aiding collaboration and creating an “in-the-office” feel even when colleagues and clients may be miles or even continents away. Not only can these technologies help supervisors track their employees’ progress but they also let employees stay in better touch with their office-bound peers. The resulting ‘anywhere workplace’ — one that pairs a telecommuter’s access to corporate resources with a mobile user’s freedom of movement — results in increased productivity and increased employee retention, as well as the ability to better connect, communicate and tackle the business challenges of today and tomorrow.

 

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