Is the Beast from the East beasting your business?
We reach the end of February to find “The Beast from the East” causing significant end-of-winter disruption across many parts of the UK. It seemed timely to review a recent Nowcomm blog that we posted just over a fortnight ago. Ideas for organisations to adapt and address the positive and negative challenges of the flexible and mobile workforce.
One section of the article covered Commuting to work during severe weather conditions. Given the extreme weather we are currently faced within the UK, the irony continued as I read my first few lines of the earlier article “Adverse winter weather isn’t particularly surprising. Yet winter snow, ice and storms all seem to result in lost productivity due to travel delays on UK roads and railways each year and produce major knock-on effects to the cost and efficiency of doing business.”
All the above seems true again as I write this post. The weather isn’t surprising, we are still in winter after all! Further, forecasters predicted the cold blast 3-4 days prior to harsh conditions hitting the UK, so it’s hardly a surprise. Yet as schools, nurseries and care clubs close, clearly many working people with children experience the knock-on effect of missing work along with finding alternative childcare options. If that is taken care of it then becomes a hard slog for staff to try to reach the workplace as roads run slow to gridlock, and public transport creaks under the strain of the winter elements.
As our original post referred to the guiding mantra “expect the unexpected” in all areas of business and personal life, we highlighted the opportunity for organisations of all shapes, sizes and industries in both the private and public sector to explore and adopt the use of secure communication technology to enable flexible working models. These digital solutions deliver risk management and mitigation that can enhance and protect against business-affecting issues, like those mentioned above. For example, here at Nowcomm today we are again working 100% effectively, using the solutions and services we provide to our customers to maintain our optimal working model.
Organisations that are built to offer workforce flexibility can naturally operate with the agility to seamlessly work around unforeseen problems as and when they occur. It is these flexible organisations that can always maintain the highest levels of productivity and performance. Such organisations do not simply achieve “some level” of business continuity, rather they continually operate business at their usual high standard and with all the advantages this provides. That’s another business benefit of delivering flexible working features and solutions in addition to having more creative, engaged and innovative employees delivering excellent services to the organisation’s customer base.
If you want to have a chat with someone from our team about this, then feel free to email [email protected] or call on 01332 821100.
