Unemployment is low, job vacancies are high, and businesses are struggling to retain talent. One way businesses can retain employees is to offer remote work and flexible work arrangements, both options that promote better work-life balance. Another way is to make employees’ jobs easier by providing tools that improve productivity and the actual experience of working. There’s actually one tool that can do all this: a hosted private branch exchange (HPBX). HPBX technology allows employees to work from anywhere but stay connected on the company’s communication network. Here’s what an HPBX can do for you.
Remote Work
When employees work from home by default, there are a number of challenges for IT to address. First and most obvious, IT can’t build a network inside an actual office building and call it a day. Employees are distributed in their homes which may be all over town, all over the country, or even in different parts of the world. This also means that not only are you relying on many networks to make your network, well, work, but you’re also relying on a lot of devices (modems, routers, computers, phones, and all the cables and exchanges local ISPs operate).
An HPBX lives on the cloud. The actual hardware (i.e., the server farms hosting the private branch exchange) is owned (or at least operated) by the HPBX provider. They do all the actual work of keeping things maintained. You don’t really need to buy, operate, or maintain much, if any, hardware at all. Your employees can just use their own devices to connect to your HPBX. Your IT people can monitor the whole thing remotely. Every single person in the whole network can be remote if they want. And you know what? Telling an employee, “Hey, don’t worry about an hour-long commute. In fact, don’t worry about city housing prices. Work from your dream home you’re building at Lake Waskesiu for all I care” is a powerful motivating factor in keeping them on your payroll.
Remember this: other businesses are offering workers remote work by default. Those other businesses are using HPBXs. Do you want them poaching your employees?
Flexible Work
Of course, not every business can afford to have everyone work from home all the time. But flexible work is becoming more normal. What happens when an employee is stuck at home because of a blizzard? Or has to monitor a sick child? With an HPBX, they can access their office from home. The tension between “this thing is keeping me from the office” versus “I need to be in the office to take care of x, y, and z” is resolved because the office can be anywhere.
Employees want flexibility out of their employers, and why not? Everyone has responsibilities outside work, everyone needs a bit of flexibility from time to time, and everyone has the option of searching for job providers that are flexible in their approach. A major benefit of HPBX is it allows for a lot of flexibility.
Making Work Better
But not all work is at the office. You may have an employee going from different workstations at your facility, or from facility to facility. And then there are the employees always on the road, going from client to client. Or in the air, visiting partners and vendors in other cities. There are many models of work, and it’s pretty annoying to be cut off from your messages, calls, and other digital tools when you’re moving from site to site. In the past, an employee like this might have gone back and forth from a central office in sort of a hub-and-spoke model.
But by using an HPBX, an employee can take their office with them wherever they go. The entire suite of digital tools—from video to calls to collaboration boards to every document on the server—can be accessed from your HPBX’s digital platform. By making the office virtual, your employees can be present where they’re needed most.
Productivity
People quit jobs for all kinds of reasons. One big reason though: they don’t have the right tools for the job. Your communications system is a tool. If it’s hard to use, inconsistent, or just plain bad, it can easily become a factor in someone quitting. Think of Office Space, where the underappreciated office drones destroy a printer. There’s a reason so many people find it relatable. Who hasn’t hated a subpar piece of office equipment?
You never want your phone system—or any other digital communications platform—to be that hapless printer. So invest in a system that will make your talented employees happy—or, at least, won’t make them upset. That’s where an HPBX comes in. It’s easier to use than a legacy phone system, comes with all kinds of features, and unifies communications to streamline everything. And guess what? If your employees are happy with their tools, they’ll get more done with said tools. Boom, productivity advantage and you keep people happy. What’s better than a win-win like that?
