More than four million Britons have abandoned the workplace in favour of working from home. Research, released in June 2015, shows a surge of 800,000 people becoming home workers over the past decade. Analysis of Government figures reveals that the total number regularly working from home is now at 4.2 million – up from 3.4m in 2005.
This surge in home working is being fuelled by the right to request Flexible Working, as well as technological advances making it easy for people to work remotely, according to the Institute for Employment Studies.
According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, employers need to adapt to the changing nature of work and this starts with recognising that working life can exist outside of the four walls of an office environment.
The demand for Flexible Working can help to significantly reduce overheads. As a business owner you probably welcome this aspect of home or remote working, but you still want your business presented in a professional and consistently branded manner.
Read on...
For traditional office-based businesses a move to, even partial, Home Working obviously saves on the direct costs of office space and all the associated overheads of heating, lighting, parking spaces etc. Home workers themselves save on travel time and travel costs.
Other, less obvious, benefits are continued staff availability in adverse weather conditions and lower levels of sick leave and absenteeism.
Businesses also become more resilient in terms of disaster recovery by the impact of theft, fire or flood. Even in the face of terrorist attacks such as the Canary Wharf Bombing in 1996, the Twin towers bombings in 2001, due to the spatial diversity introduced by Home Working.
However, one of the key challenges is to ensure that staff continue to make and receive calls via the published business numbers. These calls should also be logged for performance monitoring and recorded for training, quality and audit/compliance purposes.
The Flextel system provides a low cost, high quality solution by providing Flexible phone numbers with a range of powerful, built-in features that are controlled by management, but given to Flexible Workers to use. This means that calls made or received on personal mobile or home phones use the main business number or a dedicated direct-dial number allocated to each specific employee or agent.
Home life can be protected from disruption from out-of-hours business calls by using our simple, but powerful, Diary feature. Out-of-hours calls can be scheduled to our integrated Voicemail facility or even routed worldwide to available staff in different time zones.
The service, developed over twenty years of careful design, is unique in the UK. As well as all the usual powerful features, Flextel's system also provides a two tier control system. Level 1 is used by staff to control where they wish to make and receive calls, using a simple numeric PIN. Level 2 gives Management override access via a dedicated account and password.
By providing home workers with dedicated Flexible numbers, they control where they need to make and receive calls. If the home worker leaves or becomes unavailable you can simply change the PIN and redirect all business calls to another home worker or group of home workers. So your business services are uninterrupted and protected from theft.
You can choose from various types of numbers depending on your specific market needs e.g. 0800 Freephone numbers, Local numbers, 03 numbers for lower call cost nationwide use and 084 numbers, where the service can cost you nothing to operate. Regardless of which number type you select they all come packed with the same set of powerful features, many free of charge.
"As a mobile surf business we are on the go constantly and our 0844 Flextel number fits perfectly with the way our business operates. It means we can be on the move and answer customers from anywhere. Flextel is ideal for any business requiring a unique number for ease of use and flexibility." -- Thurso Surf School
We help those who need to be 'in two places at once' or are hard to track down (usually requires calling several numbers) because they're always on the move. Our clients include...
The area of business you work in requires frequent travelling and/or relocation, yet you do not wish to burden your contacts by frequently updating them with new phone numbers. The ideal solution is to have a single permanent number that can be routed to the new number each time you relocate. The Flextel service delivers this through a single Flexible Telephone number.
By using a Flextel Number, you only ever need a single point of contact. Flextel Numbers enable seamless transfer of your communication systems and eradicate the possibility of missing important calls from clients and/or business contacts.
Executive Motors representatives travel great distance, often spending nights in hotels before returning to central office the next day. All personnel are provided with a Flextel Number, which they simply move with them. This helps Executive Motors by ensuring that they keep in contact with their employees through just one number.
Smith's Contractors work on complex building projects, spending long periods on site and so use site cabins for offices. Once their office phone lines are connected at a new site, they can simply route their Flextel Number to the temporary office phone and therefore stay in contact with both past and future clients by the redirection of all calls to the site office line.
All Flextel Numbers are also completely free of monthly services charges, so there are absolutely no bills to worry about as you move from location to location. Some are completely free to own and operate.
We help organisations with elected members or posts/positions that frequently change.
When people contact an organisation, they usually want to correspond with
a particular role within the organisation rather than with a specific individual. For example, a prospective member would want
to contact the membership secretary, or if a member has an article for the organisations
newsletter he would want to contact the editor.
After most elections there is usually
some change, but by using Flextel Numbers there is no need to update contacts with new numbers for each position, as a unique phone number can be assigned to each role within the group in order to cover future personnel changes.
For example, when the membership secretary retires, people will immediately speak to the new membership secretary when calling the same Flextel Number. Having one Flextel Number per position can save the club
money, as all Flextel Numbers are completely free to own and some are even free to use.
Flextel Numbers can also be obtained in a memorable block of consecutive numbers so that stationery and publications can look more organised:
As well as for long term strategic benefits, Flextel's services can also be used for temporary changes, such as if a member is ill or unavailable.
Example:
The Chairperson of a Third World debt relief charity is away on holiday and is unable to deal with calls at that time. With a Flextel Number arrangement in the committee, enquirers can still call the Chairperson's number but be instantly redirected to the Vice-Chairperson who is available to deal with their call.
This approach will make the charity appear more organised than others and may affect the number of donations they receive, as usually the absent member's telephone is left to ring, or is answered by a machine indicating when the member will return.
The alternative would be to send out notifications to all interested parties (members, other organisations, press etc.) informing them of the new contact phone number. This is expensive and unprofessional, since retired members may frequently be interrupted with enquiries and have to provide the enquirer with the phone number of the replacing individual. In light of this, it seems that Flextel provides the ideal solution to gain more smooth functioning for all types of organisations.
A Flextel Number is a phone number that can be linked to a position or title, not just an individual, for the lifetime of a club or association. The personnel may change, but the contact phone number will remain the same.