A March 2020 report authored by researchers at Cavell Group, titled, ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on the Cloud Comms Market,’ the novel Coronavirus pandemic’s led to an influx of enterprises looking to deploy home-working solutions for employees. Andy Elliot, AudioCodes’ VP of Marketing told me, the company’s seen this first-hand, witnessing what he called a “massive uptick in requests for work-from-home solutions.”
I was told, this newfound traffic’s been especially expansive, as have services such as voice integration with Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Genesys, for contact centers that want to maintain business continuity. According to the same report, service providers saw a 60 percent increase in demands for Microsoft Teams in March and a 30 percent jump in requests for Zoom, along with growth in traditional phone calls.
“Technology is fuelling the home-working revolution. This much is clear”
Elliot, playing Devil’s advocate, provoked a paramount question during our time together, asking me: Is this change short or long-term? His answer, “there’s a more fundamental shift happening in our working practices, which are fuelled by team collaboration and unified communications technology.” He believes these technologies are the new norm for a large section of the global workforce.
“This holds for knowledge workers, contact center agents, those in customer service, sales, and other administrative functions previously tied to an office”
Business continuity, as you may know, is not a short-term concept. It is more of a long-term thought process. And Elliot acknowledged that we’ll eventually emerge from the pandemic, but said businesses will have to recognize continuity is necessary and it should be sustainable. He likened a short-term fix to putting a band-aid on something that requires much more serious medical attention.
Other elements, such as real estate cost savings, inexpensive cloud communications, and collaboration tools that enable higher levels of productivity, all came up in our interview. All points Elliot stressed. On top of that, he said the countless other benefits outweigh any downsides employers might consider, and this includes flexible working practices. This, he added, will act as an incentive to attract long-term talent to your teams.
Climate change, Elliot contends, as well as the race for zero emissions, will too have an impact on how we work. “More businesses will deploy home-working to reduce the CO2 emissions associated with the daily employee commutes and the energy consumption of large office spaces.”
He added, more and more individual employees will likely seek to work from home based on their level of environmental consciousness. “It will also depend on their desire to make a personal contribution to reducing emissions. Personal responsibility drives change too – if a passionate and articulate Swedish teen can convince me to switch from diesel to an electric vehicle, then anything is possible,” he continued.
Just this month, Square announced its employees could work from home permanently, long after the shelter-in-place-order ends. Twitter is another pioneer that’s enabled permanent work-from-home, which could very well hint at remote working not being a fad. Facebook previously told its employees they could work from home until 2021.
