One of the US’s biggest technology firms reportedly wants half of its workforce to be home-based by 2020.
Many organisations sing the praises of remote working, but not all of them implement it on a truly wide scale – it’s often seen as a means for office-based staff to work while on business trips, for example, rather than a permanent way to save on transport costs and help the environment.
As it becomes ever easier to connect to the internet, however, and as more and more enterprises turn to the cloud to fulfil their data storage and software requirements, remote working will only grow – and some organisations are already looking to capitalise.
This week, Dell – one of the US’s biggest technology firms – announced that it wants half of its employees to work from home, at least part of the time, by 2020. This represents a massive expansion of the company’s Connected Workplace programme, which already allows a substantial 20 per cent of staff to work remotely when it suits them – and is credited with having saved Dell $14 million (£8.7 million) last year.
According to TechWeek Europe, the strategy was outlined in an internal report called the ‘2020 Legacy of Good’ plan, which read: "Technology now allows people to connect anytime, anywhere, to anyone in the world, from almost any device.
"This is dramatically changing the way people work, facilitating 24-7 collaboration with colleagues who are dispersed across time zones, countries and continents. Dell is a global technology leader, so our team members should be able to take advantage of the flexible work opportunities that our own products and services create."
Dell’s plan contrasts with another recent announcement from a US technology giant – in February, Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer told employees they could no longer work from home. This prompted something of a backlash – remote working doesn’t just bring about cost savings, as in Dell’s case, but it’s also been established in many studies to improve employee satisfaction and productivity.
To discuss how your organisation could let more members of staff work from home with a cloud-based electronic document management system, why not give Dajon a call today?