Member Article

Staying productive during the Games

Are businesses prepared to thrive during the summer’s sporting events? Telligent’s Steve Poncini offers top tips to boost business agility through effective collaboration

Millions of people are expected to flock to London this summer for the 2012 Olympics, putting pressure on the transport system and affecting thousands of Londoners’ daily commutes into the office. With many employers opting to have their employees working remotely, it’s imperative for employers to provide the tools to keep their employees connected and collaborative during this time. Steve Poncini of Telligent, the leading enterprise collaboration and community software company, provides some top tips to keep your business working during the summer of sport:

• Work from home – with the right tools

According to our research, the sporting events this summer will impact more than half (52%) of UK employees’ working lives, with 57% confirming that they will be working remotely. Employing remote working schemes is a great way to manage commuter chaos this summer, provided that businesses have the right solution in place to enable employees to work collaboratively and effectively from anywhere.

• Put the tools in place

Working from home will help employees escape crowded trains, but remote working is only effective if the right tools are in place for employees to be able to communicate internally. Unfortunately, our research has found that only 21% of UK workplaces provide the tools for people to work from home effectively. Don’t be unprepared: put the tools in place to facilitate collaboration and you’ll reap the rewards of productivity.

• Become a social business

Due to the popularity of social networks in the modern world, people are now using social media platforms to communicate with their work colleagues. Businesses need to adapt their internal solutions to use enterprise social platforms or risk being left behind.

• Listen to employees

Employees are increasingly expected to be reachable outside of ‘normal’ 9-5 working hours and, furthermore, in today’s busy world, many prefer to work flexible hours from different locations. Therefore, it’s unsurprising that 74% of UK employees say a social collaboration platform would be valuable for workplace communication and two in three employees (66%) say that social collaboration tools will be especially useful to their job this summer. As an organisation, the key here is to listen to employees’ needs and answer them in a way that best suits the enterprise and the employee, for a win-win scenario all around.

• Learn from the Olympics

62% of UK employees report regularly working with team members remotely or in different locations, so remote working will not just affect people during this summer’s Games; it is becoming an integral part of business communications. Moreover, for companies wanting to scale in the long-term and expand globally, ensuring an effective worldwide collaboration strategy is a necessity.

The fact that wireless Internet and Internet-enabled mobile devices are ubiquitous in today’s workplace landscape provides great evidence that we are living in a 24/7, ‘work anywhere’ culture. One of the key lessons that businesses can take away from the Olympics this summer is to be prepared for what’s coming next by having the tools to enable internal collaboration and communication across their organisations.

To find out more about what UK employees had to say about remote working and workplace communications around the 2012 Olympic Games, please download Telligent’s 2012 Market Survey Report.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Steve Poncini .