AS I write this article it is Tuesday 20 March early in the morning – well 8.30am, early for me these days! It should have been in last Friday but if you recall there was quite a lot of snow and everyone was having ‘snow days’. Taking time off work because of a sprinkling of the white stuff and in all the confusion I completely overlooked my duty to you, the readers of the Business Times.
However on Thursday 8 March, when it all started, the dbfb HR team decided to send everyone home at midday with instructions not to come in on the Friday because the roads were just ‘too dangerous’. Personally, I was horrified when I was told, but too late to do anything about it. Close the office? Send people home on full pay? What is the world coming to?
It was only when I rang the office number to find out what on earth was going on, what about our customers in the grip of this awful weather, that I discovered the whole team were ‘teleworking’ – using their mobiles and laptops to carry on just as if they were in the office. And the fact is the service in answering my call was just as good, if not better than when the office is open. How was this achieved? Because of investment in the latest technology and ultra fast connectivity.
We all need to get up to speed but a spokesperson I saw on the news recently was talking about 2020 or 2021 before we get ‘gigabit speeds widely across the UK and many of us have over 30 megabits per second anyway’. Well it’s NOT good enough!
A Reuters poll recently revealed that approximately one in five workers around the globe, particularly employees in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia, telecommute or telework frequently and nearly 10 percent work from home every day. That’s because generally they have better communication networks than us.
Ranting over… I recently attended a Milton Keynes and Northamptonshire Chamber of Commerce dinner at Whittlebury Hall where CEO Paul Griffiths presented both Chamber charities, Macintyre for Milton Keynes and Cynthia Spencer for Northants, a cheque of £500 each from fundraising during the last 12 months.
There, good news to finish on this first day of Spring!
Today’s weather – Currently cloudy 3 degrees rising to 7, down to -2 overnight!