Working away from the office is a viable option and, in many cases, the preferred way for mature employees to work.
From 2005 to 2007, my wife worked from Las Vegas for a San Jose, CA insurance company as an in-house underwriter. She managed a very large case load when technology was not as advanced as today. It was a win-win for her and her company. She was a known self-motivated employee and her company decided to experiment with the concept in order to retain her services. Physical case files were shipped via DHL daily and everything else was done through fax and Cloud tools.
There are many aspects to consider when allowing (or encouraging) some of your work force to work away from the office. These include the maturity of the employee, the type of work to be done, how well management can track productivity and quality control, etc.
Given that an employee is mature enough and the work load can be done away from the office, working off-site is the answer.
First, let’s consider the cost to the company. Cloud database systems can be expensive but our experience at S W Business Solutions shows that expensive is a relative term. Most business software is subscription based. S W Business Solutions, LLC uses this model where a fee (nominally $1,000) is paid during development and then a fee is charged thereafter. This puts the burden of development costs onto us. We make conversion to the Cloud affordable.
One major cost saving is computer system infrastructure. You no longer need your IT team to maintain expensive computer servers and networks. Even if you provide your staff with laptops and printers, the cost is dramatically less than a server, routers, switches, cabling and workstations.
Further you do not have to pay the cost for database backups, anti-virus software and operating system upgrade labor. All of that is provided for one low monthly cost by your internet service provider. We recommend Hostek (www.hostek.com) because they provide solutions on shared systems for as little as $10 per month up to full server-farm managed systems. Hostek is GDPR compliant and has a very strong focus on data security.
We suggest that you quantify your IT and server system costs. Then factor in the cost of flooring for your staff; desks, chairs, partitions, utilities, etc. When you compare the bottom line with the cost to move to a physically distributed work force, there are true savings to be had.
This is not to say that all of your team must work out of the office all of the time. Physical meetings, performance reviews, project reviews and kick-off meetings can still be held in an office. However, it could be a smaller office with a small in-office staff and a large conference room that is shared with other businesses and reserved as needed.
Many of these exist in and around Las Vegas such as Regus Office Spaces. I am sure that each major city and many towns have such office spaces available. Such an office space provides a receptionist, snack area, lounge and restrooms for which you, as the business owner, are not responsible. You still have a physical address for your business and a focal point for clients and vendors.
Such a model as I have quickly described above is a great way to dramatically reduce costs.
Worried about employee performance away from the watchful eyes of management? Fear not.
S W Business Solutions, LLC has been providing productivity and performance analytics since 1988. This includes “tattle-tails” where improper behavior is captured and reported to management. One instance comes to mind where we caught a $38,000 embezzlement in 1994 at a check cashing chain; $31,000 was recovered. Another was where we caught industrial espionage being performed by an estimator in a concrete construction company. We have tracked cross-sale ratios, excess employee time off, policy compliance violations and many more behavior traits. Managing employees in the Cloud is indeed possible and effective.
The reality is that working away from the office is a reality. S W Business Solutions, LLC. specializes in Cloud hosted browser-based business database applications. We provide the online tools so that employees can work away from the office without the company paying a fortune for remote login to their in-house servers.
Data security is actually better in the Cloud than on your in-house server. Break-ins occur and serves are stolen. Also, according to a Cyber Security PhD candidate we know, 67% of all data theft (deliberate and accidental) is caused by employees. On an in-house server system, the employee can insert a thumb drive and steal all kinds of data. This is so very much harder to do when the data is in the Cloud at a secure facility.
Please contact us at michael@swbslv.com. We can help you with your planning and implementation of your move to a physically distributed work force. We have 20 years experience in middle management with TRW, Inc and GTE Sylvania, Inc. plus 30+ years of business software development and consulting. Best of all; our rates are affordable.