Cost cutting is currently top of mind for all organisations big and small. One of the solutions being touted by everybody from politicians to CEO’s is an increase in flexibility from employers when it comes to home working.
Transport minister Norman Baker recently announced he believed allowing employees to work from home for just two days a month would significantly cut transport congestion, “Part of my brief as a transport minister is to sometimes encourage you not to travel. I want to be the first virtual transport minister,” he told the Telegraph.
Meanwhile, this week, The Guardian dedicated a whole G2 supplement to the trend. The title of the piece was ‘Bye bye, office’, it espoused the benefits of a home working culture; less time spent commuting, dealing with office gossip or politics and uncomfortable or unpleasant office conditions. Meanwhile for companies, increased home working would lead to a reduction in overheads, such as rent, utilities and cleaning services.
The Guardian cites BT as the pioneer of this trend – they began encouraging remote working in the 1980’s and now have 10,000 members of staff that don’t come into the office at all.
When you think about it, the fact that this trend was pioneered and championed by a telecoms company is not surprising. For home or flexible working to be successful, reliable, cost effective methods of communication are key.
Productivity demands that ideas and information flow as consistently between remote workers as they do face to face, but some forms of digital communication like email and instant messaging can be misconstrued and feel a bit stilted. Actually talking helps foster a feeling of cohesion and understanding, allowing any queries to be addressed in real time. As technology advances, various ways to overcome this problem have been devised, including audio and video conferencing.
Audio conferencing is an instant, direct and cheap method of communication – or at least it should be. Providing home workers access to a reliable conferencing service is essential but how will the cost of these services affect your bottom line? (The idea was to save money after all!)
The answer is … it shouldn’t, however the majority of conference providers and line providers are still using out of date methods of pricing and premium rate numbers, meaning these services cost way more than they should when you combine the fee charged by the provider and the cost of all users calling in to a premium rate number.
03TALK is championing the use of newly released 03 numbers, making it the only provider in the UK to offer a cost effective solution for conference users dialling in from mobile phones as well as fixed lines. 03 calls must be included in bundled minutes, and any calls made outside of these packages are charged at a local rate. 03TALK believes in a transparent service that saves people money, our service is free, why are you paying?
Head to the website to instantly generate an individual conference room today at www.03TALK.com
More information on terms like conference bridge and voice conference can be found on 03TALK article pages. If you would like details on our 03 conference call service or how 03 conference calls save you money please visit 03TALK. Please note some customers refer to “Conference Calling” as Teleconferencing or Teleconference (its the same thing!).
