How many of your staff were unable to get into the office during January’s spell of snow? And how many of them were still able to work from home effectively?
The travel chaos caused by the recent snow and the resulting difficulties of getting to work highlight the need for housing providers to embrace mobile working, not only for their maintenance, repairs and inspection staff but also for their office workers.
While there are some cost implications of enabling working – laptop/netbook provision, VPN access, security and back-office systems configuration – these will be eclipsed by reduced staff ‘down-time’ due to travel or weather problems. You will also see improved productivity throughout the year as staff find that they are no long constrained by the need to be in the office to work and can instead access all of their normal business applications and corporate information while at home or on the move. Indeed, the next generation of employees will simply consider mobile working to be the norm.
