Remote workers reduce carbon emissions.
“As councils seek to reduce the amount of property they manage, they are challenged with providing communications infrastructureto remote sites and the issue of providing voice communications to home workers,” says Kelly MacMillan, Markets Specialist at IP communications solutions provider Mitel.  “The cost of leased lines can be prohibitive”. 

Forward-thinking Pennaf Housing in Wales, has already taken a big step towards achieving these goals, working with Civica who recommended and supplied Mitel’s Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providing a single source of delivery for all customer correspondence, telephone calls and emails plus free calls for the company when using broadband. The initiative included the set up of extensions to 15 remote office locations. 

Location independent technology offers limitless opportunities for workplace location. Johnnie Johnson Housing wanted to provide a more efficient service to their callers, improve their carbon footprint and reduce costs. “In fact one member of Johnnie Johnson’s staff wanted to work from France over Christmas.  Civica’s Mitel technology has allowed him to do this seamlessly from abroad”, says David Rowlands, Director of Civica Connect. 

According to Rowlands, advances in technology such as Fixed Mobile Convergence and PDA telephony that allows such ‘extension mobility’ are key drivers to remote working. “Growth is driven by cellular phone manufacturers who are producing phones that work on a wireless or GSM network,” he says. 

‘Presence’, which shows staff availability status on the desktop and allows users to setup conference calls and transfer calls is also maturing. If someone is in a meeting,  Presence may save a receptionist 30 seconds per call. “Shave off all those 30 seconds in a year and you’ll see business savings”, Rowlands adds.

Increasingly, public sector employees are working flexibly to reduce their impact on the environment. “Employers are looking at equivalence of days working from home to carbon saved,” says Rowlands. Server-side technology like thin client demands less energy than traditional computing models.  “Thin client uses 9 watts of power, rather than PCs which use 90. More organisations are sharing PC workloads at data centres,” he says. 

One pitfall in implementing remote working however, is a fear of reduced communication with colleagues. Staying part of the team can be partly overcome by deploying localized video. But prior to deployment, strong internal communication is called for, says Rowlands. “Human resources and customer services have got to be more involved with the IT team. It’s changing – but not fast enough.”