COVID-19 has brought remote working into the spotlight. People across geographical boundaries, industries, and organizational hierarchies are all working remotely. However, as work-from-home programs become more popular, there is often the fear of reduced productivity and efficiency. Since businesses have no option but to comply with remote working, they want to empower their workforce and ensure they stay productive in the process. Wondering how to keep your mobile workforce productive? Read on to find out!
What is a Mobile Workforce?
Techopedia defines as a group of employees who are scattered across various physical locations and are connected by computers, smartphones, and other devices via the global Internet. Although better connectivity and advancement of remote working technologies have been driving the business world towards this trend, the COVID-19 outbreak has made it a way of life. Today, mobile workforces have become a global trend allowing employees to work from their homes – without being bound by a central physical location.
Because the technologies through which they are connected are extremely portable, they have made life easy for the remote workforce. However, ensuring the mobile workforce carries out tasks, manages time, and meets goals efficiently is a tough task. In a remote workforce model, productivity often goes for a toss – unless properly planned for and managed.
Productivity and Communication Tools
When it comes to ensuring the productivity of the mobile workforce, modern tools have a big role to play. Organizations can invest in a number of different tools to enable (and ensure) productivity. These include payroll management, file sharing, workforce management, team collaboration, project management, cloud storage, productivity tracking, help desk, time management, videoconferencing and screen sharing, reporting, and more.
The right tools can not only streamline the process of file handling and digital transmission over the Internet, it can also pave the way for seamless voice and video networking. Thorough connectivity through over these multiple channels helps manage a mobile workforce that is not centralized in a single office space. Modern productivity and communication tools allow the mobile workforce to:
- Leverage technology to carry out tasks efficiently (and in time) using laptops and mobile devices
- Allow secure anytime, anywhere access to workspaces and applications in the cloud and carry out tasks effectively
- Enable seamless collaboration between employees across the world through features such as file sharing, conferencing, and personal and group chat
- Monitor individual performance as well as that of the team and get insight into challenges that affect productivity using dashboards
Examples of Tools to Use
Navigating a global pandemic like COVID-19 requires organizations to drive all their focus and attention to enabling the mobile workforce to work as seamlessly as possible. Transforming remote workspaces into secure, highly collaborative and productive environments while allowing access to critical business applications is the need of the hour. Here are some examples of tools you should use to keep your mobile workforce productive:
1. Microsoft Teams
As COVID-19 continues to impact businesses across the world, Microsoft Teams acts as a central hub for teamwork, offering a plethora of remote collaboration capabilities to keep the mobile workforce extremely productive. Employees can reach out to peers using the chat feature, have audio/video conversations with teams, and collaborate on documents in real-time.
2. Office 365
Office 365 also has a lot to offer. Mobile workforces can make the most of their favorite productivity apps – using the device of their choice. Whether it is creating documents on Word, reports on Excel, presentations on PowerPoint, sharing documents through OneDrive, and sending emails through Outlook – this one stop hub offers all that remote teams need to be productive.
3. Juxto
For a mobile workforce that is primarily working from home today, the significance of real-time communication is humongous. Communication platform Juxto provides remote employees with a modern, secure, and reliable way to communicate with peers in real-time. Using Juxto, mobile workforces can make the most of turn-key voice services across Cloud PBX, Cloud Contact Center, and Cloud Collaboration and enjoy a unified communication experience with employees across the world.
Adjusting to the New Normal is the Only Way to Success
As remote working becomes a norm, creating a digital workspace that empowers employees to work with agility and resiliency has become extremely critical. From enabling access to centralized resources from a greater range of devices to allowing seamless, real-time communication across departments, streamlining the file sharing and document management process, to paving the way for collaborative teamwork – organizations need to support their mobile workforce holistically.
COVID-19 has completely changed how businesses operate and its impact will be visible for a long time. What’s important is for organizations to adjust to this new way of working and drive efforts in ensuring productivity of the mobile workforce.
For more information on tools to keep your workforce productive, contact an expert at Synoptek today.
