Could Your Business Benefit from Mobile Office Flexibility?
There was a time when the best technology, newest devices, fastest Internet connections and most current software were only available to regular people at the jobs where those people worked. With the mobile revolution of the last several years, however, powerful and versatile mobile devices have put extraordinary workplace capabilities into the backpacks and even pockets of most Americans. These tablets, smartphones and laptops run on reliable 3G, 4G and LTE networks that are standard on most consumer networks.
Today’s employees – backed by cloud-based software and storage – can act as their own in dependent satellite offices. This is a boon for worker and employer alike. Likewise, solopreneurs may take their office with them wherever they may travel.
Mobile office flexibility benefits both workers and employees alike.
Flextime
When you have mobile office capability, you have employees who aren’t shackled to cubicles, work stations or even offices. The concept of flextime – allowing employees to dictate their own schedules according to their own habits, obligations and tendencies – simply wasn’t possible before the mobile office revolution. Employees who aren’t tired, preoccupied or missing their kid’s soccer game are happier and more productive. Traditional sales techniques and training ideas can be applied just as easily to workers who are working on their own schedule.
IT Costs
Maintaining, updating, securing and protecting the equipment that makes the office run is the job of the IT department. Not only do startup IT investments drop when offices go mobile, but the perpetual upkeep of devices, software, servers and storage are dramatically minimized in the mobile office. As discussed in “5 Examples of Mobile Office Flexibility,” a full IT team that may have been required in a traditional office can be whittled down to a single, part-time IT professional.
Reduced Training
When employees are using their own mobile devices to work – or if they’re using company-provided mobile devices that they use enough to become familiar with – they don’t need nearly as much technical training. When their laptops and tablets are truly theirs, your employees can hit the ground running.
Mobile devices give average people access to technology that was only available at their jobs just a few years ago.
The mobile office makes employees happier and more independent. It also reduces costs in the fields of IT, training and infrastructure. By harnessing the power of the devices that workers are using anyway, smart businesses are pushing their enterprises into the future with the devices of today.
Andrew Lisa is a freelance business writer. He covers office software and mobile technology.
