The challenges and opportunities of Office 365

The remote workforce is increasing every year. The growing affordability of smartphones and tablets, mobile technology innovations and increased productivity by improving communications and company workflows make it simpler than ever before to work remotely. While telecommuting has its challenges, it also has many advantages in improving productivity.

Microsoft Office 365 has solutions to the growing trend of mobile workers by offering scalable document management and applications kept on the cloud-based servers. In any case, there are challenges and advantages with your teams' telecommuting while producing work from their mobile devices. 

CHALLENGES

• Communication
• Tracking productivity
• Worker trust
• Unified company cultures

Usually, when you want to have a conversation with a worker, you would ask them to come by your workplace or visit their desk. With remote workers, managers will have to find excellent ways to start a relationship with their teams. A manager could have weekly status calls to discuss projects and other times instant message with video or email conversation might be the best way to discuss matters. When tracking productivity, the concern is knowing how much work is done each day. Many telecommuters are self-starters and can follow their time professionally while others could take benefit of not having a micromanager boss over their shoulder and slack off.

Trust builds a flexible mobile workforce. That trust goes both ways. Let them understand you're there to assist them in fixing issues, break up workflow obstacles, and provide direction as required. While personality traits and behaviours such as honesty can be assessed during a meeting, you never know if teleworking is a good fit until they’re in the condition. At that point, trust is made over time.

Regarding a united company culture, workers often collaborate best when they have personal contacts with each other. Since people are usually social beings, working remotely can cause a disconnect. Businesses can either have monthly or quarterly meetings in-person or plan for virtual meetings to connect for company culture.

Advantages:

• Reduce your overhead costs
• A greater sense of work-life balance
• Attracting quality talent to hire
• Happier workers to keep them around

By providing remote work, businesses can decrease overhead costs by saving money on office space and tech equipment while increasing worker efficiency. Remote workers can cut down on the time and money spent on the commute to an office five days a week. It’s a win-win for everyone. This gives your workers the freedom to work from anywhere they want, which offers a greater sense of work-life balance. Discuss setting a work schedule so that at the end of the day they can shut down their laptop and disconnect from work. This will enable workers to mentally unwind and enjoy their downtime versus working irregular hours so they can begin work with a fresh perspective the next day.

This will eventually attract top-notch talent for your team. Many workers view working remotely as an advantage. Attracting the best candidates for your team is critical for your business to be successful. Many job seekers are looking for a decent benefits package, salary and if they can work remotely, it can make the difference between a potential hire choosing to work for your company or the competition. Allowing your workers to telecommute keeps them satisfied, and a happier worker is not only more productive, but they’ll also stick around for the long run.

PERKS OF OFFICE 365

·         Document collaboration

• Internal group communication
• Search and discovery
• Seamless integration

We utilise the power of Office 365 so that teams can share and discuss documents, as well as the facility to edit and co-author documents directly within your network. Internal groups allow your workers to build a space that's just for them – and linked by invitation only.

It's a place where they can talk overwork, as a team, and tackle plans and initiatives together. The search and discovery features can assist your workers find people, information, and groups that are related to them, their customers or their interests.