The Teleworking Landscape
Teleworking, telecommuting and working remotely are all familiar terms, yet many organizations are apprehensive about adopting these practices into their work culture. Despite an overall slow-moving move to telework, statistics indicate that it is becoming widely popular among both the public and private sectors, and several organizations are pioneering the path to virtual offices. Recent studies revealed nearly 45 million employed Americans work from home, a number that will undoubtedly continue to grow as companies recognize the financial benefits associated with teleworking programs.
Proponents of teleworking have long argued that allowing employees to work remotely can provide enormous benefits to businesses, employees and the community in general. Some of these benefits include**:
- Reduced air pollution due to a decrease in highway congestion;
- Improvement in quality of life for employees who spend less time commuting;
- Savings of as much as $7,500 per employee per year due to a reduction in office space needs and other associated costs;
- Increased productivity by employees due to improvements in employee benefits; and
- Reduced absenteeism by employees as well as improved recruitment and retention of employees because of the flexibility to work at home.
Teleworking Technology
There are several technology options to help implement teleworking in an organization. It is safe to say that the inherent technology needs for a teleworker are the following:
- Computer
- Internet connectivity
- E-mail program
- Telephone
- Fax machine
In looking at these essentials, few allow for quality interaction between an employer and teleworker, and they do not address the "myths" or concerns that managers have when considering teleworking. The highest concern expressed from management has repeatedly been the fear of having less control over employees who work from home, ensuring that they remain productive and efficient. This particular concern can be addressed by introducing a richer medium for continuous communications, such as an online communications solution or collaboration tool suite.
VIA3: A Proven Solution for Teleworking
VIA3 offers a secure and cost effective way to connect home office workers with the main office, without the need for expensive VPNs, conference calls, or other technology investments. VIA3 from VIACK is a completely secure online communications service that combines live audio, video, instant messaging and real-time information sharing in one convenient desktop offering. While other desktop video conferencing & web collaboration solutions may claim to offer similar type solutions, they are typically not interactive and dynamic. Nor do they provide the airtight security your teleworkers need to safely share information with colleagues.
With live audio, video and information sharing, VIA3 offers an ideal teleworking solution. With presence detection, you can automatically see who is online and available for a quick question or interactive meeting. Real-time collaboration and interaction of documents allows teleworkers to perform at their best. With joint editing, multiple users can make changes to Word documents and save the file to a completely secure file cabinet-a unique encrypted file system only available through VIACK. In addition, VIA3 enables access to data to be restricted on a need-to-know and right-to-know basis.
Unlike other desktop video conferencing & web collaboration solutions, with VIA3, there are no separate telephony or conference call charges, no meeting rooms to book and no expensive suites of equipment to purchase. VIA3 provides the ideal environment to conduct meeting directly from your desktop. There is no need to bother with dedication facilities or separate audio connections because it's all integrated into one package.
Related links:
How VIA3 is used in government
Government certifications
About VIA3 security
