When talking about setting down the “right” policies for a remote working arrangement, it’s important to keep two points in mind.
However, just because other Silicon Valley companies have implemented remote work arrangements, that doesn’t mean every company allowing working from home takes a completely hands-free approach to the act, simply installing an IP telephony system and telling their employees to do their work whenever they want, wherever they want, as long as they get it done. In fact, the most successful companies with the most successful remote work arrangements tend to build their workforce from the ground up with remote-oriented employees, or they place firm boundaries on their remote working policies, or they give their employees all the freedom they could ever want while simultaneously incentivizing them to spend every waking hour at the offices.
Essentially, the most successful forward-thinking companies use work arrangements as an addition to traditional work structures instead of as a substitution. Not only that, these companies think through and organize their remote work structures with a lot of care, a lot of thought, and a lot of oversight, something to keep in mind when implementing your own remote work policies.
The only response Yahoo! released regarding their work-from-home ban illuminates an important facet of the debate. After reaffirming the company’s commitment to not “discussing internal matters,” Yahoo!’s PR reps stated:
“This isn’t a broad industry view on working from home- this is about what is right for Yahoo!, right now.”
In other words, Yahoo!’s basically saying they aren’t laying down an indictment of work-from-home arrangements across the board. Instead, Yahoo! hints the problems lay internally, they lie within how the company itself was handling its work-from-home arrangements, a point reiterated in comments made by some of Yahoo!’s ex-employees speaking on the matter.
The fact of the matter is- the way Yahoo! announced and implemented its ban on work-from-home arrangements, and the fact the company refuses to discuss the matter, is just as problematic as the actual logistical ramifications of the decision itself. The decision was sent via an internal memo to the company’s employees, a memo that was quickly leaked by disgruntled Yahoo! employees.
Here’s what the memo says, in its entirety, in case you haven’t read it yet and to refresh the memories of most of you who have read it already:
Over the last couples weeks a single piece of news has hit the tech world hard and been the focus of spirited debate, with different publications, bloggers and popular writers taking both sides of the discussion.
In late February Yahoo! decided to effectively ban work-from-home opportunities for their employees. While it’s unlikely any other company is going to follow Yahoo!’s lead and put a stop to their own work-from-home opportunities, the ban itself and the debate it’s inspired has brought to light many of the Pros and Cons of remote work arrangements, which may influence the way you choose to implement these arrangements in your own workplace, and which may convince you these arrangements aren’t right for your organization either.
With all the talk about hosted telephony over recent years it’s no wonder some organizations feel sceptical about making the switch away from their current solution. Most organizations are inherently conservative and tend to adopt a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. Part of this mentality comes from inherent human stubbornness and preference for what we already know we like, another comes from a reluctance to spend money when it doesn’t seem necessary.
A report released at the end of 2012 seemed to point towards a very promising future for mobile VoIP, which is, roughly speaking, nothing more than VoIP services run on smartphones and tablets through apps like the one offered by Skype or Google Voice. The report was released by Juniper Research and it projected the mobile VoIP world would chalk up 1 billion total subscribers by 2017. This is a bold projection, one that seems to indicate VoIP is the future of mobile telephony, but many experts read the report and asked a simple question- “How many of those users will actually generate revenue for mobile VoIP provider?”
Now, let’s say you run into a best-case-scenario when it comes to the dollars-and-cents comparison of your switch to IP telephony. Your current provider continues to sell their services for twice as much as the IP telephony provider you decided to switch to. This is great, but saving a little money for your organization isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, especially if you aren’t the final decision maker in your department.
Think about it this way- unless your department is already grossly over budget, or unless your department has been explicitly instructed to cut costs, saving money isn’t that big of a deal in-and-of itself. In the absence of immediate budgetary pressure decision makers aren’t looking to spend less. They’re looking to spend more and get more. Service improvements help them meet their ambitions, impress their bosses, and to otherwise get more done than they’re currently accomplishing.
Price is a huge factor when it comes to deciding between sticking with traditional telephony services and making the jump to IP telephony. It’s one of the biggest selling points IP telephony providers use to push their technology, and it’s one of the clearest, firmest, more directly measureable ways decision-makers at an organization can see the benefit of switching over to IP. After all, while organizational flexibility and scalability are great benefits they can seem a little abstract, factors whose potential may be difficult to envision when a business is currently locked into a relatively fixed traditional telephony technology set-up.
Continued from “Just How Big Will VoIP Market Grow (Part 1)“
Falling price point primed to match consumer expectations isn’t the only reason Point Topic believes the global VoIP market is due to hit 40 billion dollars in annual revenue by the year 2015. After all, ideas of substitution commodities and ideal price points are a little academic, a little theoretical, and they don’t quite bring the hard-nosed proof that the global VoIP market is set for some big, big changes over the next couple of years. For that sort of proof, Point Topic looked at an area they considered an important “test bed” for rolling out the technology.