How VoIP Makes “Work From Home” a Cinch!

Every business has to work on attracting and retaining talent in a competitive economy. Given the severe skills shortage and talent gap in many industries, the ability to retain good employees is vital for companies.

Apart from compensation, perks and benefits play an important role in this process. Some businesses boast of their work culture and office environment while others offer more vacation days or retirement bonuses to attract people. One of the best perks you could provide for potential candidates is the opportunity to work from home. It’s often called by different names – remote working, telecommuting, work from home etc. But the phenomenon is the same.

Remote working or work from home is a growing trend across the world. More people than ever before are choosing to forgo daily commutes, the stress of sitting in traffic, and an office environment filled with interruptions. Thanks to cloud technology and VoIP, working from home is possible for a wide variety of jobs. If you have a robust business phone system, there is no reason why at least a few employees cannot work from home on a regular basis.

Work from Home: Full-Time or Part-Time?

Not all jobs can be performed by the employee is not in the office. But you can still offer flexibility as a perk. Working from home doesn’t have to be a permanent situation either. Some employees like coming into the office – at least on some occasions – to meet with colleagues or work on important projects.

Employees working from home can do so full-time, a few days a week (to accommodate issues like caring for children or elderly parents) or even occasionally (during an emergency, for example.) In each of these situations, employers who offer the possibility of telecommuting will attract and retain great candidates better than the competition.

How VoIP Makes Work from Home Possible

It is only in the 21st century that we have the tools enabling employees to work from home. With the rise of cloud services for everything from accounting software, email, and CRM tools to business phone systems, your staff can do their work regardless of location. So there is no need for them to come into the office every day.

There are several VoIP features to help employees working from home such as:

Conference Calls

Most hosted VoIP services include conference calling in their plans. Conference calls can be audio only, video or a combination of both. Sometimes participants will not have a camera so only a few can join the video feed. Employees can convert a regular call into a three-way group call or set up meetings with anywhere from 5 to 20 participants.

Conference calling is a boon for remote workers. They no longer have to come into the office to meet project teams, clients, supervisors, and other stakeholders. It makes it easier to collaborate with colleagues who may be in another state or even country. Businesses can save a lot of money because they don’t have to pay for employees to travel for meetings.

Advanced Voicemail Tools

There is not much you can do with traditional voicemail – you can leave a message and retrieve messages that others have left for you. Voicemail on VoIP is much more sophisticated.

For one thing, many vendors offer voicemail and email integration. Users can set up their voicemail so that messages are sent directly to your inbox, along with a copy of the original recording. Some services automatically transcribe the content so employees don’t have to listen to voicemails in a noisy environment.

Users can reply to voicemails from within your inbox or return calls using the softphone app on the computer. They can check their voicemail inbox from any Internet-connected device, not just the IP phone. All this means that workers can retrieve voicemails on their schedule and prevent them from interrupting other tasks.

Innovative Call Handling

VoIP offers traditional call handling options like putting callers on hold, transferring calls or forwarding them to voicemail. However, users also have access to more innovative features. If someone has multiple devices, they can configure incoming calls to ring all of them at once. They can also have the system ring those devices one by one until they answer the call. No one has to miss a call because they’re away from their desk for a moment!

Many organizations are starting to realize the benefits of employees working from home. This is especially true of sales representatives, customer service teams and call-center workers. Why have workers come into the office to answer calls? They can do the same work from home with VoIP.

VoIP makes work from home possible for millions of employees worldwide. In fact, many companies find that their workers are more productive as they are able to work in a distraction-free environment. It’s a win-win situation for everyone!