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Yet while broadband has come down in price too, those service providers targeting the business market warn against consumer services masquerading (偽裝) as business?friendly broadband.
“Broadband is available for as little as ￡15 a month, but many businesses fail to appreciate the hidden costs of such a service,” says Neil Stephenson, sales and marketing director at Onyx Internet, an internet service provider
based in the north?east of England. “Providers offering broadband for rock?bottom prices are notorious for poor service, with regular breakdowns and heavily congested (擁堵的) networks. It is always advisable for businesses
to look beyond the price tag and look for a business?only provider that can offer more reliability, with good support.” Such services don?t cost too much—quality services can be found for upwards of ￡30 a month.
The benefits of broadband to the occasional home worker are that they can access email in real time, and take full advantage of services such as internet?based backup or even internet?based phone services.
Internet?based telecoms, or VoIP (Voice over IP) to give it its technical title, is an interesting tool to any business supporting remote working. Not necessarily because of the promise of free or reduced price phone calls
(which experts point out is misleading for the average business), but because of the sophisticated voice services that can be exploited by the remote worker—facilities such as voicemail and call forwarding, which provide a
continuity of the company image for customers and business partners.
By law, companies must “consider seriously” requests to work flexibly made by a parent with a child under the age of six, or a disabled child under 18. It was the need to accommodate employees with young children that
motivated accountancy firm Wright Vigar to begin promoting teleworking recently. The company, which needed to upgrade its IT infrastructure (基礎設施) to provide connectivity with a new, second office, decided to
introduce support for remote working at the same time.
Marketing director Jack O?Hern explains that the company has a relatively young workforce, many of whom are parents: “One of the triggers was when one of our tax managers returned from maternity leave. She was
intending to work part time, but could only manage one day a week in the office due to childcare. By offering her the ability to work from home, we have doubled her capacity—now she works a day a week from home, and a
day in the office. This is great for her, and for us as we retain someone highly qualified.”
For Wright Vigar, which has now equipped all of its fee?earners to be able to work at maximum productivity when away from the offices (whether that?s from home, or while on the road), this strategy is not just about
saving on commute time or cutting them loose from the office, but enabling them to work more flexible hours that fit around their home life.
O‘Hern says: “Although most of our work is client?based and must fit around this, we can?t see any reason why a parent can?t be on hand to deal with something important at home, if they have the ability to complete a
project later in the day.”
Supporting this new way of working came with a price, though. Although the firm was updating its systems anyway, the company spent 10-15% more per user to equip them with a laptop rather than a PC, and about the
same to upgrade to a server that would enable remote staff to connect to the company networks and access all their usual resources.
