remote employees

4 REASONS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BYOD

Before the days of smartphones and laptops, the idea of asking an employee to bring their own devices would be considered laughable. Can you imagine, employees hauling bulky desktops and towers to work each day? BYOD has made what was impossible, possible.

The evolution of technology has been rapid. At this point, BYOD is old news. However, the buzz surrounding it hasn’t quieted down. Its popularity is expected to grow. Companies aren’t asking if they need BOYD, but rather what is the best practice for implementation. It’s quickly taken its place as a part of our modern business culture.

That being said, some organizations are still hesitant to adopt a BYOD policy. Here are a few reasons why it’s beneficial.

 
Productivity
One of the most significant benefits of BYOD is the boost in productivity seen in all departments of an organization. Employees are using devices they are familiar with making it easier to take full advantage of device features. IT Technicians are using tools they already understand, requiring less training. Organizations can maximize revenue through productivity.

 
Cost
If you’re a business owner, you know the costs of technology can be substantial. Supplying an entire company with devices can add up quickly. BYOD programs shift costs to the individual user. Businesses have noticed as employees use their smartphones and tablets maintenance and service fees are drastically reduced. Additionally, employees who use their own devices are more likely to have the latest technology, meaning you don’t have to …

The Pros and Cons of Hiring Remote Employees

More and more of the global workforce is working remotely: about 70% work from somewhere other than their office at least once a week. With so many people choosing to work remotely, it has to make business sense, but unfortunately, it’s not perfect. Here are the pros (and a few cons) of hiring employees to work from home.
The Pros

Expand your talent pool. One of the biggest advantages to considering remote employees is the far broader range of candidates you can tap into. If you’re looking to fill a specialized role and choices are sparse in your area, you can open up the position to candidates across the country—even around the world. This means increased workplace diversity, potential for greater innovation, and access to better cultural fits for your business.

Increase engagement. According to SHRM’s 2016 Employee Benefits report, 60% of companies offer their employees opportunities to telecommute, but some businesses aren’t so sure. Remote workers are often stereotyped as lazy and disorganized, but research shows that they may actually be more motivated and productive than their office counterparts. This is due in no small part to today’s worker seeking flexibility in their careers. Working remotely allows employees to get work done when they are most focused and achieve the all-important work/life balance that is receiving increasing attention from management and employees alike.

Lower overhead costs. As anyone with access to their business’s finances knows, operational costs are far from negligible, especially when it comes to shared office spaces. …

Man with device

Pros & Cons of BYOD

The BYOD or Bring Your Own Device movement has gained a tremendous amount of traction and isn’t going away anytime soon. Many companies now allow employees to bring their own laptops, smartphones, tablets, and other productivity tools to their workplace and reap the benefits of familiarity.

While most employees tend to speak only positives about BYOD, not all employers share the same opinion because a haphazard BYOD policy can put a company in several tricky situations.

If you’ve thought about implementing BYOD at your office but haven’t been able to decide, consider the following pros and cons of BYOD.
Pros of BYOD
1. Comfort: The best thing about this program is that it allows the workers to use devices that they are already familiar with. Because the employees are already comfortable with their devices, they can focus more on work-related tasks instead of “settling in,” making increased efficiency one of the biggest pros of BYOD.

2. Flexibility: When you allow your employees to use their own device, they are better able to work remotely. Remote workers can join calls, meeting, and general collaborations from anywhere and at any time, without needing work-issued tools to access their documents and data.

3. Cost savings: Perhaps the most obvious benefit of BYOD for employers is the financial savings from not having to buy a device for each employee. Rather than issue a brand new smartphone with its own data plan to every hire, employers need only to ensure that new hire downloads the right applications to …

Don’t Stay Stuck at Your Desk

Modern society has been engineered to keep you sitting down. You sit while you work at the office, you sit when you drive, you sit when you watch TV, and through so many of your day’s activities. We all know and acknowledge that exercise is good for our health, but are you aware that sitting down might be actually killing you?

Sitting has been linked to obesity, heart disease, and even premature death. Thankfully, many workplaces have begun to recognize these negative effects and the value of allowing their team to move around for both health and productivity. Unified communications have significantly simplified the ability of people to communicate “on the go” so that they are never forced to remain sedentary.

Here are some of the ways you can work outside of your cubicle:

 

1. Take a break to walk around after you finish a task

Every time you get something done at the office, make it a point to stand and move around for a while. Get up, stretch those tight muscles, or even take a lap around the building. If you’re worried about your boss giving you a hard time for taking a break, make use of the instant messaging capabilities of your unified communications 2017 system.

Instant messaging will allow you to keep your projects moving without the need for calling meetings and writing lengthy emails. This is “work while you move and move while you work” in the truest sense.

2. Go out for lunch

You …

The Apps That Help You Stay Connected

The way teams work is changing. Remote work and mobile offices can make it hard to stay productive and stay in touch. But every day new apps and programs are released that are designed to help us be productive, stay connected and get more done. These are just a few of those apps.
Asana/Teamwork:
These project management tools help your team stay connected, productive and on task. Both let you assign tasks and subtasks, tracking a project from start to finish. Assign certain tasks, leave comments, add files and connect with those outside your organization. Which one you use is up to to you, and there are even more to choose from, but a project management tool is a must for collaboration.
Evernote
Evernote is note-taking on steroids. And every business owner, creative, go-getter and idea man needs a place to take notes. Evernote provides that and more. It’s a space where you can store notes, documents, images and more. And, you can share those notes (or entire notebooks) with the team members you need to collaborate with.
Trello
Trello is a project management app that is not only great for working with teams, but can also help organize your personal life. A visual list that lets you drag, drop, upload images and share, Trello gives you an overview of your life.
G Suite
The Cloud, Drive, Docs, Calendar, Gmail; G Suite are all Google apps that make your life easier and make it easier to work together as a team. Share documents, save them …

Getting the Most Out Of Your Remote Employees

Whether your firm is adding to its remote workforce, or just beginning the process of incorporating remote workers into the company, there are numerous things to consider.

Whether you’re evaluating an existing employee as a remote worker, or interviewing a potential new hire for remote work, an individual’s skills and his/her ability to self-manage are obviously a necessary item. It’s important to establish and maintain a trust level with each remote worker. But beyond that, there are a number of additional items to keep in mind:
Provide the Necessary Equipment
With a remote workforce, it’s important to maximize communication through the use of technology that is meaningful for your particular industry. This may include the installation of a cloud-based or hybrid phone system. Additionally, you may want to evaluate allowing the remote employees to operate within a “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policy for their mobile devices.
Schedule Regular Meetings
Some organizations schedule weekly video conference calls across various geographic regions to accomodate the remote workforce. The participants include different levels of related management and remote workers. The exchange of information keeps everyone in the loop, discussing the strategies that are working for the business and those that are not. Any new techniques used or tested are shared and discussed.

Depending on the proximity between remote workers and management, occasional face-to-face meetings might also provide advantages in order to instill a sense of belonging within the organization.
Discuss Schedules
For many remote workers, one of the benefits of working remotely is a flexible schedule. …

How Mitel Communicator Can Improve Team Communication

Team communication is critical to the success of any business, so it makes sense that you would want to give your team every advantage. The Mitel Communicator, call manager software that integrates with Mitel communication systems, may be just the advantage you need.
What is the Mitel Communicator?
Mitel Communicator is the unified communications interface that works with Mitel Premise systems to streamline all user communications across your company. Accessible from virtually any internet-enabled devices, for many users, Mitel communicator becomes their first stop for any type of communication.
How Does Mitel Communicator Improve Teams?
There are a few ways that this user-friendly interface can actually improve how teams communicate and collaborate effectively.
Works Across Devices & Platforms
Mitel Communicator is available as a web application via your favorite web browser, as a desktop application, and on a majority of mobile devices. Switching to a new phone system can often mean a learning curve towards full utilization, but because devices remain the same and the interface so simple, users are able to get up to speed almost immediately.
Intelligent Calling
One of the best ways to nurture great team communication is to allow team members to communicate on their own terms. Mitel Communicator allows users to decide how to route their calls based on who is calling them. That means they can send team calls directly to their cell phones when they’re away from the office while salespeople go to voicemail. That means less time returning important calls, and less time dealing with …

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Millennia Technologies is a full-service voice and data solutions company for midsize to enterprise customers. Specializing in UCaaS , CCaaS , Cybersecurity , IoT , Voice , Cloud , and more. Our passion is firmly rooted in showing clients how well-designed data solutions can significantly accelerate business operations, and then celebrating their goal-shattering successes.