There's No Business Like Snow Business
Posted by Campbell Williams | 07 Jan 2010
Category: Unified Communications
Happy New Year to you all, I hope you all enjoyed the Christmas period and haven't been too inconvenienced by the snow. We've started 2010 like we finished 2009: chaos on the roads and transport networks, with the attendant absenteeism in the workplace. Press reports this morning told us that nearly half of the UK's workforce didn't make it in yesterday, which seems extraordinary.
As a resident of Hertfordshire, my trains were running (albeit with delays and cancellations) but were virtually empty. Which tells me that a large number of people could have made it to work but have decided to use the weather as a convenient excuse to extend their holidays. Others aren't so lucky - especially up North - and genuinely cannot make it to work.
Never has the need for a real Business Continuity strategy been so clearly needed. We hear people tell us that they have remote working capability but what they really means is that a tiny percentage of their workforce have a laptop and could access the network if they wished. How many people who are "able" to work from home are currently out sledging with their kids? I don't want to be all "bah humbug" just after Christmas, but I think we know there's some skiving going on! Likewise, many of those who are snowed in are twiddling their thumbs, wishing they could do something constructive. As a director myself, I know that these things cost UK plc money.
Ask yourself these questions of your business:
- Can your people connect to the corporate network from home?
- Can your people connect to the corporate network on the move?
- Do they have teleworking telephony capability at home?
- Can they be reached on their company extension/DDI wherever they are?
- Do you have presence and availability tools to see if they're working?
- Do they have conferencing capability so they can communicate properly?
- Do they have collaboration capability so they can have virtual meetings?
- Can the business redirect calls from one site to another immediately?
- Can you deliver any calls on any number to anybody in any location?
If it's all "no" or only "yes" to the first one, you need to look at the impact of that on your business in terms of lost productivity and lost service delivery. If you can say "yes" to them all, you're probably wondering what all the fuss is about! Your business is running as smoothly as it ever was, even if people aren't in the office, and you've not noticed any difference.
Here's the bottom line. You're paying your people thousands of pounds each, every month, to do a job for you. A UK average salary employee (£24,000 pa) costs you £100 a day in wages alone; probably 50 to 100% more in real terms. Why not spend a few hundred quid on at least your most critical employees to ensure they can still work and your company can keep running, whatever the circumstances?
Don't let this snow business leave you with no business...
