In these competitive times, businesses have to do what they can to trim the fat and cut costs. This is often an unpleasant process. Cutting costs can mean laying off employees, reducing benefits packages, or moving to smaller or less appealing offices. All too often, reducing business expenses means getting rid of the things that make employees happy and productive. For that reason, cuts can hurt a business more than help.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. Some cost cutting solutions save businesses money without reducing employee numbers or worker satisfaction. In fact, what I’m talking about can boost worker happiness and productivity!
The solution is implementing remote access work systems, which allow employees to work from home, or any setting that they choose. Remote access work systems are becoming increasingly popular, largely because they appeal to employees who want to be productive and connected to their jobs, but also want the freedom to work away from the office. This allows you to hire the best workers – regardless of where they reside.
Remote access work systems are employee-friendly, but are not solely about making employees happier. They also please employers and managers by saving on business expenses and freeing that money to be spent in more profitable, productive areas.
Here’s how it all works.
Less Office Space
The most immediate and perhaps largest change that comes from adopting remote access work systems is dramatically reducing the office space needed to run the business. Employees who work from home don’t need cubicles or offices, kitchens or storage rooms. They provide their own work facilities. The result — less money spent on renting or buying office space, and more cash invested directly in business activities.
Fewer Utilities
This can be huge, especially in hot or cold climates that require major outlays to heat or cool office space. Although paying for things like heating, lighting, and gas don’t create revenue, they can have a major drain on the bottom line. In markets where margins are tight and competition fierce, reducing these costs can make the difference between a business turning a profit or running a deficit.
High Tech, Low Cost
There is nothing low-tech or simple about remote access work systems, but in an important sense, they don’t require that much technology. That is, the companies that use them don’t have to spend much money on business technology like computers, phone systems, printers/photocopiers, and other essential pieces of office technology.
This cuts back on costs, and eliminates or greatly reduces the need for technicians and services that do upkeep on office technology. For larger companies, the savings from this alone can easily total hundreds of thousands of dollars, every single year. And since employees already have their own devices, instituting a program like this is neither complicated nor time consuming. It can be done relatively quickly and painlessly, and the savings are immediate and enormous.
No More Service Staff
Many businesses are forced to pay big money just to maintain their facilities. Housekeeping, electricians, engineers, repairmen, plumbers, and pest control specialists all have to be hired (or contracted with) to do upkeep on a company’s facilities, and the total paid to all these workers can sometimes be tens of thousands of dollars a year. And that’s despite the fact that none of them do anything that is essential to the business’s operations; they simply do upkeep on office space and buildings that are no longer needed in this era of remote access work systems.
This is the beauty of remote access work: It allows businesses to pare themselves back to the essentials, so that they are only paying for the things that will make them more productive and more profitable. They free up money to spend on benefits that employees will appreciate (and work harder to get), while allowing employers to cut only those costs that are truly unnecessary, or that really are cutting into their businesses’ productivity and profits.
The Role of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
While these remote systems are economically compelling, they can pose a potential security disaster.
Because these remote systems are not under direct IT control, hackers may be able to gain access. It could be a friend or family member in the home, or a hacker that attacks when workers compute in public places.
How then can we mitigate these risks? The answer is to secure access through strong authentication. When implemented correctly and using a quality solution, multifactor authentication (MFA) will not only keep your digital infrastructure safe, it will do so without inconveniencing your employees.
You may want to use MFA in conjunction with Single Sign On (SSO) to increase security and simplicity when employees sign into your company’s system. SSO allows a user to have direct access to all of the platforms they use, but they only need one credential to access them. It’s like having a single, very secure key to access 100 different doors with 100 individual locks.
MFA can help increase login security exponentially. If you are looking to invest in a MFA solution, download our eBook, “12 Questions to ask Your MFA Vendor” here.
