Going Green in 2013
By Sarah Brown, Director of Sales and Marketing, Momentum Telecom
There’s no denying that telecommuting is on the rise. So what does that mean for corporate sustainability efforts? Allowing 50 percent of the workforce to work from home part of the time would yield a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions equal to taking 9.6 million cars off the road for a year. With an average commute of 25 minutes, a worker would save nearly 109 hours per year of commute time. Added bonus: telecommuting supports domestic commerce – if eligible workers would telecommute half of the time, we could cut Persian Gulf imports by 75% and deplete foreign oil expenses by $23 billion. Convinced that going green is a path your company should take in 2013? Here are the steps it takes to achieve an efficient and effective virtual worker environment.
- Set your business up with a Hosted VoIP solution which can provide features that extend beyond the actual phone that sits on your desk. Hosted VoIP for business supports a plethora of services and products that can be utilized across multiple devices and help your employees communicate in multiple formats. These tools provide a way to stay connected to your business voice services wherever work may take you. Some Hosted VoIP services like hunt group, anywhere, call forwarding, virtual fax and collaboration tools make it easy to stay connected in a virtual workspace, as well as add valuable time throughout the day improving productivity.
- Having collaborative tools like Unified Communications in place provide an all-encompassing platform to keep teleworkers plugged into business, wherever they may be. UC solutions transcend the limitations of devices, platforms and user locations to deliver a seamless collaboration experience wherever you need to do business. Equipped with a UC solution, employees can use the Internet to power real-time communications capabilities, including instant messaging and web collaboration, and to hold meetings with audio, video and web conferencing tools. With UC’s ability to provide frequent collaboration and business on the go, it makes it easy for employees to be just as, or even more, efficient as working in the office. A crucial element to UC that makes a virtual workplace function seamlessly is audio conferencing. This collaboration tool empowers greater communication with customers and remote team members. Having an advanced and reliable audio conferencing system in place is very important to the success of your business because it is your way of connecting with prospective clients, current clients and employees around the world.
- Cloud-based fax solutions which allow your business communication tools to be available wherever you are. Virtual Fax uses the power of the Internet to send and receive faxes to email. With any web-enabled device, users can quickly access faxes, anytime, anyplace. Not only is Virtual Fax extremely fast and easy to use, it is more affordable, reliable, convenient, environmentally friendly and secure. Having the right collaboration tools in place can help your business as well as the environment. Making the investment in the right tools ensures that your company is staying up to date on the latest innovative technologies as well as reaching its sustainability goals.