Companies and smart working – let’s clarify

Let’s start with some clarity: smart working and teleworking are not the same thing. The second is what the British call “agile work” and means having a work contract that allows you not to have to attend company offices to work. Smart working involves a few days a week spent working remotely, typically at home.

This article deals with smart working in the general sense of a work methodology that does not involve the use of an office.

Advantages of smart working

With the rapid development of technology, employees can now work from anywhere in the world. The days when they were assigned to a desk have passed. Smart working is changing the concept of work.

Smart work starts from the assumption that “work is an activity and not a place”. Paul Allsop, founder of the Agile Organization, defines this new concept of work as follows:

Agile work consists in bringing together people, processes, connectivity, technology, time and place to find the most appropriate and effective way of working to perform a certain task. It works according to the guidelines (of the activity) but without boundaries (of how you reach it).

Once free to work remotely, employees feel emancipated, are prone to innovation and are generally more productive. Employees are more motivated and smart working leads to better customer satisfaction. Ultimately, there is a better profit for the company.

In detail

The definition of smart working is rather confusing. Every company, even within a specific sector, has its own way of working. There are no strict rules on how smart working is done.

There are basically four factors to consider when setting up a remote work system:

   – Time: when you work
   – Role: what do you do
   – Place: where you work
   – Sources: teams and activities

Regardless of what the smart working methods are, the company that wants to offer it, must provide adequate infrastructure to carry out remote activities.

Possible obstacles

All the evidence and data indicate that smart working works very well and offers discrete benefits for both the company and the employee. But one must be aware of the possible problems that this entails:

   – Lack of trust and responsibility
   – Corporate culture absent
   – Resistance to change
   – Difficulty in the technological approach by employees
   – Lack of responsibility and tolerance of behavioral problems

Once these problems are overcome, there will be a solid foundation on which to grow and develop a company by embracing new advantageous working methods.

Adequate company structure

In order to offer teleworking to their employees, or a smart working solution, companies must have some essential tools. Not being physically present in the office, but having to work as if they were necessary, employees must be able to take advantage of adequate infrastructure to perform their duties.

For tariff some examples:

   – Corporate laptop for employees involved in smart working
   – Cloud storage service for versatile data sharing
   – Teleconferencing tool to facilitate communication
   – Infrastructure monitoring system for data operation and control of the operation of the machines involved
   – VPN to create and manage dedicated and secure networks

Business tools

Companies today can count on technologies that allow them to support this work structure easily and in an economic way. By implementing virtualization solutions, relocating your human resources becomes quite simple.

The virtualization of resources can take place at different levels and offer adequate solutions for every need. There are three main ways of virtualization.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

With this a model, virtualized hardware resources are made available. The company can create and manage, according to its needs, a private cloud infrastructure, without worrying about where resources are allocated.
Examples: Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2), Google Cloud Engine, SOD SuperCloud.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

In this model, online platforms are offered, thanks to which the user can release the web applications and services that he intends to provide to third parties. You can develop and run your own applications through the tools provided by the provider, which guarantees the correct functioning of the underlying infrastructure.
Examples: Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Google Cloud SQL

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

This model includes applications and software accessible from any type of device, through the simple use of a client interface. In this way, the user does not have to worry about managing resources and not even the infrastructure, as they are controlled by the provider that provides them.
Examples: G Suite, SOD Cloud Web Conference, SOD ownCloud, etc.

Concluding

Smart working is increasingly popular and we can expect it to be the standard in the not too distant future. In order to support it, the company must have adequate services and infrastructures that support the workload.

The advantage is also guaranteed by the fact that the virtualization of resources is offered as a scalable service, capable of growing and adapting to the size of the company.

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Useful links:

ownCloud

Cloud servers

VPS Metered – Cloud location

SaaS – Software as a Service