In the present climate, the need for staff to work from home is likely to increase. It could even become mandatory in some places.
For most businesses, being forced to send their staff home will have a major impact on their productivity and their efficiency. Both of which will have a severe impact on their profitability and their cashflow. In fact, it is likely that some businesses may even become casualties of the problem.
But, we are here to tell you how you can not only maintain continuity through this difficult time, but also how you can turn it to your advantage.
Remote Working
Depending on your business, you may or may not need staff on site to carry out their duties. Even if you’re in an industry that requires some of your workforce to physically be on location in order to fulfil your business activity, there are still ways to reduce the number of people that you need to have on site.
Remote working has become more common over the past decade or so, and whatever your thoughts on that, the fact remains that it will continue to be part of modern business practice in the future.
The research shows that employees who work from home (contrary to popular belief) actually tend to work longer hours than those who commute into an office.
Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons for this is precisely the fact that they don’t have to do any travelling, they don’t have to leave by a certain time to beat the rush or to make sure they catch their train. As such, they tend to spend that extra time at their desks, working.
How it can make you money
In the short term it can feel like a big shift, it can feel like relinquishing control or placing an awful lot of trust in your employees that they’ll continue to be productive when outside the working environment.
So, taking that first step into letting some of your employees work from home, or even encouraging them to work from home can feel daunting.
But did you know it can actually make you money?
Nowadays a properly utilised CRM system solution can transform the operational efficiency of a business. The outlay vs return is that for every £1 spent you’ll make at least £8.71 back on average.
A well-considered CRM will also make working from home far easier, as it allows all operational activity to run through a single web-based platform, meaning employees can access it from anywhere in order to work.
The money spent on a CRM system and remote working practices will have a significant impact:
Example; a company with 20 employees with an average salary of £25,000 could expect to save approximately £227,600 per year.
This shows the impact that allowing your staff work from home, coupled with a CRM system that simplifies the process and allows you to make significant savings.
In addition, a good system will actually increase your productivity and allow you to make more money, so it will pay for itself at both ends of the spectrum.
Other factors like reduced staff numbers, lower office costs, lower heating bills, lower electricity bills etc all mount up to make your margins bigger.
A temporary solution
If it suddenly becomes necessary to send your staff to work from home, be that through media hysteria or because your offices were otherwise put out of action, building a CRM at that point wouldn’t do you much good, as you’d still lose all the time between that point and when a CRM could be put in place – not always a short process.
However, we have a temporary solution in place that can rescue or prevent a pretty dire situation from becoming worse.
This can effectively allow your staff to access their PC’s and company files remotely in an emergency or unexpected situation – like being snowed in during winter for example!
This means you keep your productivity levels high, your operations running smoothly and your profits as healthy as possible in such times.
To find out more or to talk to us about mitigating the impact of unexpected staff absences or CRM systems in general, please get in touch today!
