With storing data in the cloud, comes the ability to access files and applications from any location. This gives enterprises the opportunity to allow employees to work from the comforts of their own home, with the added bonus of cutting out the commute – which is costing the average UK worker £135,871 by the time they retire.
Despite many businesses wanting to implement a work from home policy – they do not know how to go about doing so. Here are a few things that businesses should consider when devising a work from home policy:
1. Who gets to work from home?
Each employee plays a different role to the business. It is essential to assess the physical requirements of each worker in order to carry out a work from home policy to the best ability.
Roles within customer service are an example of a job role being unsuitable to work from home – this is due to the heavy reliance on telecommunicating and being divided into structured teams/groups to handle queries.
However, even those who rely heavily on collaborative working can opt for remote working. Cloud computing can enable files to be accessed from any location securely to enable workers from all over the world to work together on one live version of the truth.
2. Equipment requirements
Evidently, to work from home employees are required to have access to their own piece of tech. If employees do not have their own device and a work from home policy is then put into action – it is up to the employer to ensure all workers are capable of leveraging the opportunity
A major advantage on an enterprises part of a work from home policy is that they are no longer required to equipped staff themselves. This removes the need for businesses to pull out large chunks of their budget in order to have an IT setup that is suited to the needs of the number of employees.
3. Monitoring performance
Many organisations are against allowing their employees to work from their own home due to the inability of being able to monitor performance physically.
With employees not being present and accounted for in the office environment, this can cause employers to fear that they are not actually working and for those who do not opt to work remotely, they can view those who do work from other places as them “slacking off”.
For a work from home policy to be truly enabled, employers must stop measuring the presence and instead rely on performance.
4. What are your employee motivations?
It is essential that employees are made aware that working from home is not a substitute from a holiday. Ask yourself why would your employees want to work from home? The reasons can be anything from commitments such as childcare to things as simple as feeling more productive when working at home.
This element of a work from home policy is majorly dependent on how trustworthy you deem your employees – but why would you hire someone if you did not 100% trust them anyway? The fear many business leaders have is that employees will not work to the best of their ability when surrounded by the comforts of their own home.
5. The right technology
In order to truly utilise a work from home policy, the right technology must be in place to make this approach to working as efficient as possible. Although on-premise solutions could potentially enable home working, this would be limited to the amount of data you transfer from your office to your personal device. Therefore, this method is unsafe and also increases the risk of error with collaborative working.
To allow employees the ability to work freely and securely from any Wi-Fi connected location, employers must enable a way to work that encourages mobility and agility whilst being secure. Atlas Cloud can implement a cloud strategy to your working from home policy today, contact us to find out more information.
