Remote Working: Taking Company Productivity and Profitability to The Next Level

It’s 7:30 a.m. Monday and you are sitting in your car, halfway through the hour- and-a-half commute to work. The cars are bumper to bumper on Interstate 405 north headed to downtown Los Angeles, and the traffic doesn’t appear as if it will be lessening anytime soon. While you are waiting in the seemingly never-ending car ride, you wonder if you will be able to make it to your daughter’s soccer game tonight. A daydream ensues, where you picture how much easier your work-life balance would be if you could work from your home office instead of sitting in the Interstate “parking lot.”

This scenario is typical for many of Los Angeles County’s 9.9 million residents every day. Recently, Microsoft conducted a survey of more than 4,500 information workers in 15 U.S. markets to assess opinions and attitudes of remote working as well as the technologies that enable or hinder it. The survey explored the prevalence of telecommuting, employer policies and the technologies available to employees to support this. Key findings from Los Angeles revealed that the market has been slow to formally adopt a remote working policy, with only 50 percent of information workers citing that their company currently has teleworking guidelines in place. The other 50 percent of employees whose companies have implemented a teleworking program cite the elimination of a long commute and the creation of a better balance between work and life priorities as primary reasons for remote working. With employees clamoring to telework, you’d think businesses would take note.

Microsoft offers the technologies and business solutions that help companies implement a formal telework policy or take a business to the next level of seamless communication. Recently, Southern California based company Sony Electronics sought a more efficient way to organize and search for documents on the corporate intranet, while also making it simpler for employees to connect with each other and share expertise. With staff located in offices around the world, Sony Electronics faced challenges in communication across divisions and between employees. By deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and becoming an early adopter of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, the company has given employees advanced document sharing capabilities and a more effective and easily searchable intranet, saving time and boosting productivity.

Check out the latest on Microsoft’s remote- working study and ways that our innovative mobile technology tools can help take your company’s productivity and profitability to the next level.