For more and more workers, going into the “office” simply means having a laptop and a Wi-Fi connection. Telework arrangements are growing at an increasingly fast pace, with predictions that up to half of employees will be working remotely in some capacity by 2020. However, remote work isn’t an all or nothing situation. Differing levels of mobility are needed by different roles, and various mobile solutions are available for every level.

Check out these 5 levels of remote workers to help you find the technology solutions that best fit your mobile workforce.

Home Office Hero

These are the full-time remote workers, permanently stationed at their home office. They may travel into the office once or twice a month for check-in visits or scheduled company events, but most of the time their business presence is virtual.
The Home Office Hero needs a complete business mobility solution, including a home connection to the office network (whether VPN, remote desktop, or cloud computing) and a robust mobile phone plan. Unified Communications solutions with reliable screen sharing and video conferencing tools can help them keep a collaborative presence with faraway coworkers.

On-the-Road Warrior

These are the anytime, anywhere, mobile professionals who are based in the office but often on the road conducting business. Common roles include sales reps or field technicians who hit the pavement to conduct sales pitches to prospects, attend business conferences, deliver products or services to customers, or perform on-site assistance. This type of worker might need the ability to do work from an airport, hotel room, roadside, or at a client site.
The On-the-Road Warrior probably has a desktop phone at their office station but needs mobility features as well. Modern cloud phone solutions provide “Remote Office” capabilities that can seamlessly route calls between desktop phone to their mobile phone (and can even display their business extension on calls originating from their mobile phone). Additionally, these kinds of workers are often equipped with tablets and may require cloud connection to email and other business applications.

In and Out Butterfly

These are the workers who balance days at home or on the road with days in the office. They might be mostly based at home or in the field, but come into the office one or more days a week to catch up with their team and manager – enough to need access to office resources and a designated place to work.
A hoteling station is the perfect setup for In and Out Butterflies! Rather than dedicating an entire cubicle on someone who is only in the office 10-30% of the time, provide an area of several flexible workstations (e.g. desk space, chair, outlet, basic office supplies) where remote workers can set up shop on an as-needed basis on the days they come in. Shareable VoIP phones can be set up at these workstations using a “hoteling” feature whereby employees use their own extension number and voicemail on the phone as a guest.

Flex Schedule Superstar

These are the office workers who need a little bit of mobile flexibility in their work schedules. Whether it’s a parent who needs to work from home when their kids are sick or an employee with a long commute who stays home on days when traffic is gridlocked, it’s more and more common for employees of all demographics to need the ability to work from home now and then under special circumstances. This is especially valuable when situations such as inclement weather arise; rather than have your whole workforce out for a snow day, if you provide the mobility tools for employees to work from home when they need to, you won’t find your business grinding to a halt when snowflakes start falling.
Flex Schedule Superstars have the traditional in-office workstation but need some mobile capability to log into the network, check email, share files, and even place calls on the rare days they work remotely.

Always On MVPs

Let’s face it, these days nearly all employees are performing at least some work out of the office and outside of office hours. The 9-to-5 office cubicle worker is quickly disappearing in favor of constant connectivity, whether it’s reading a work document at the subway station, conducting a business call from a hotel room, or checking email from the couch on Sunday nights.
From office email connectivity on mobile phones, to Unified Communications solutions providing social integration and IM&P, to video conferencing solutions and Remote Office mobile phone solutions, workers across all departments and levels are needing more and more mobility solutions to do their job, in and out of the office.

The Technology Tools for Your Mobile Workforce

Need help selecting the right solutions for your various types of teleworkers? Allied Telecom can help! Check out our AllCloud VoIP phone solutions with various mobility and UC feature sets geared towards each level of remote worker.