Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!
6th January 2010
It's been snowing
Unless you live in a cave without a TV, internet connection or even a window; then you’ll have noticed that the UK is currently covered in a blanket of snow which is causing major disruption to the working populous and economic damage to the tune of £600 million a day according to the FSB (video clip below).
Airports are shut, schools are taking “snow days”, cars are being abandoned left, right and centre and millions of commuters are staying at home rather than brave the elements to get into work. Who can blame them?
Work from Home
Working from Home
I work from home as a matter of course; my daily commute takes me up the stairs into my office at the back of the house and as such, I’m little affected by the current atmospheric behaviour. To be honest, my car hasn’t moved off the drive since before New Year’s Eve and if the present weather continues, it’s unlikely to.
As you’d expect, I’m all tooled up when it comes to working from home. I have a decent broadband internet connection which allows me to connect seamlessly with my remotely placed associates, I’m mobile courtesy of my Blackberry and I can share and access files amongst my peers and clients thanks to the delights of cloud computing.
Remote Working
However, many of my clients don’t have this luxury as they are tied to their office. So if they can’t get in, they can’t work (a luxury in itself some would say!).
But it doesn’t have to be this way; and if there’s one thing the current conditions have conveniently demonstrated is that more and more companies are grabbing and using the available technology such as VPN’s, cloud computing and IP telephony to deploy an infrastructure that allows their employees to work remotely from the office.
Great for snow days!
Evidence of this can be seen from the public Twitter stream. People are talking about the weather yes (as we Brits like to do anyway), but people are also proudly boasting that the commuting adversity is not an issue for them as they are “working from home”.
Get Tooled Up
So if you’re in business for yourself working out of an office or if you run an office based business that employs people; how badly are you affected by the snow? Is their scope for yourself or your employees to work remotely from home in the event of continuing snow days?
If you’re not already tooled up to cope then perhaps you should be. Think of all that productive time being lost because of a few flakes of snow!
Drop me an email if you’re interested in talking to someone who can get your people all tooled up with the right IT infrastructure that allows them to take guilt free snow days.
So much global warming huh?
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Tags: Business Life, Cloud Computing
Turning Winds Says:
It really cost a lot on the snow and ice on UK and your car hasn’t move till new years eve. Wow! It’s hard to travel on a weather like this full of snow and ice. It is somewhat risky and dangerous, walking alone in a thick snow and ice is difficult to pass by.
But your doing a remote way of working that is a great strategy on making work easy without worrying going home at night or looking if it safe to travel or not.
21st January 2010