Flexible and Smarter Working is Gaining Acceptance

11th October 2013

Working away from the office is slowly but surely gaining acceptance among small business owners according to a recent survey from YouGov and Citrix.

A survey showed that 63% of senior executives say they trust their employees to remain productive when working away from the office. At Knowledge About Telecoms we are better positioned than most to comment since starting our own Flexible and Smarter Working program earlier this year. At first as a company we had doubts, we saw on paper the benefits that we could achieve mainly around increased productivity, increased morale among staff who could reduce their travel time and costs to get into work but could we achieve these benefits? Establishing trust is a very important factor, and the common question we get is -How do you know the team are doing what you pay them to do? The answer is simple our team understands that ALL staff are measured by output, therefore it is no shock or nasty surprise when activity is measured in terms of reports, questions and deadlines. The era has gone whereby performance is measured by attendance. In line with this recent survey we have benefited as a company by: a reduction in office and admin costs. a reduction in travel costs. an increase in staff productivity. an acceptance of the Bring your Own Device to work policy so employees can use their equipment in conjunction with our rules our policies to perform their work which has helped reduce office costs further. Employee morale has improved as their work life balance has actually improved, one member of our team has recently had a house move and whilst builders and electrians were in the new house they were able to work with the benefit of their 'Cloud' based systems to work from another location with zero downtime. having our best performing sales month this year. These have been since introducing our flexible and smarter working policies. A coincedence, we do not think so. It has been very difficult to find any negatives of our new policy, possibly the only one we have found is from our more 'rebellious'  and playful competitors who have suggested we have no staff and that is why we have a flexible working policy! Probably more of a shock to the staff than anyone else. So, as the survey highlights growing acceptance of flexible working, coupled with the demand for an improved work life balance shows most managers and business owners are having that 'penny drop' moment around the commercial benefits of adopting a flexible and smarter working policy. Speak to us and let us share our Knowledge About Flexible Working with you today contact our team on 0844 474 0004 or visit our website for more details.