Cloud Telecommuting: Technology Enables Collaboration
Jennifer Katrulya
Do you work from home? Are you productive?
Do you work remotely or cloud telecommuting?
Guest post by Jennifer Katrulya CPA, president of BMRG
For quite a long time, this question has dogged companies and organizations across the globe who understand why it’s important to let employees work from home cloud telecommuting, yet can’t help feeling that those same employees might be more efficient if they were physically working in an office.
On February 22, AllThingsD broke the news that Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer’s will require, as of June 10, all 14,500 employees to be on-site rather than telecommute. In the memo, Jackie Reses, the head of HR, said, “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.” According to various news reports, the issue isn’t whether Ms. Mayer believes employees are not performing to their potential; she would just rather have them together so they could collaborate and share ideas.
First, I think it’s important to make some distinctions here; “cloud telecommuting” and “working remotely” are two different things. When you telecommute, you work from home. When you work remotely, you can work anywhere, any time, cloud telecommuting, something we support at BMRG (and Cloud9 Real Time) and something I know Ms. Mayer will also advocate when her employees have to be away from the office for travel or meetings.
Second, whether you believe in cloud telecommuting or want employees to be present, there are collaboration technologies that advocate sharing information in real time. In particular, I like GoToMeeting and WebEx because you can talk with one another via a telephone or online, send someone a private message and, most of all, show your computer screen.
I recently ran across a software program called Lino in which you can use sticky notes to express ideas, flowcharts and just about any other kind of stream of communications possible. Stickies are posted in real time and admins control access levels.
Those are just a few collaboration technologies I like. While I am all for in-person dialog and idea sharing, some companies still find cloud telecommuting to be an ideal work environment. However, employees who telecommute don’t have to give up collaboration just because they physically aren’t together.
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Jennifer Katrulya is a licensed CPA and President & CEO of Business Management Resource Group, LLC (BMRG). Since the firm’s launch in 2004, BMRG has provided outsourced accounting and advisory services to several hundred small and mid-sized privately held companies.
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