It’s the first full day of spring in Washington DC today, but Mother Nature didn’t seem to get the memo – we have 4 to 12 inches of snow falling across the area, local schools, the federal government, and many local businesses are closed. We also had a “wind day” earlier in the month, with high speed gusts of wind that kept most commuters off the road. Inclement weather can’t be controlled, but just because you need to close your office to keep employees safe, doesn’t necessarily mean that business has to shut down.
Modern communication, collaboration and mobility technology can empower employees to work from home at any time. Here are four remote work technologies to achieve business continuity no matter the weather.
1. Virtual Business Identity
A major business continuity benefit of a cloud phone system is the ability to make calls using your business identity on other devices through a soft phone or mobile app (sometimes called a “Remote Office” feature). This allows workers at home to seamlessly continue to make and receive calls from clients and business contacts using their business phone number on their mobile phone, with the caller ID displaying as if they are sitting at their office desk.
2. Auto-Attendants
Another great feature of a cloud phone system is the ability to manage auto-attendants remotely. Auto-attendants are voice menu systems that direct callers to specific extensions, submenus, and voicemail boxes. With a cloud phone system, you can record and set up an inclement weather greeting ahead of time, so that on a day that your office has to close for bad weather, your receptionist can log into your system portal from home and set the appropriate greeting.
3. File Sharing
A Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) platform can often provide features such as remote file sharing and screen sharing with coworkers. On a conference call with your team and need to share a document? A UC&C platform with file sharing makes it easy to have content in common and at your fingertips.
4. Video Calling
When you’re working from home, nothing helps close the distance like face-to-face interaction. One-to-one and multiparty video calls with your team enrich virtual meetings and help provide context to remote interactions.
Need help setting up the technology that your workforce needs to work remotely when necessary? Our team of business communication and collaboration technology experts can help advise you, to help ensure business continuity in any weather.
