With the number of coronavirus cases increasing, remote working has been thrust into the spotlight. However, working from home is a daily occurrence for 1.54 million people in the UK. As a small business owner, this may be your first time accommodating for this and its challenges.

Here are a few ways UK small business owners can organise employees who have to work remotely and how to ensure productivity levels with Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems.

1. Work from anywhere

A VoIP phone system is built to facilitate remote working due to not having a fixed geographical location. 

VoIP office phone systems connect all parties under one phone number while they work in different locations. Helping you and your employees stay in touch with one another without being confined to one space.  Moreover, VoIP allows new and existing numbers to be ported over to a cloud network minimising downtime and being able to add users at will.

With a VoIP phone system your customer's won't know the difference whether you're in the office or working from home - unless the dog barks! 

2. Reporting and monitoring

One of the major struggles for business owners is monitoring remote workers when out of the office and out of sight. 

Using VoIP, there are features available to check up on remote workers using real-time day, month or yearly reports. These reports can touch upon numerous features such as the number of calls answered, chats sent to colleagues and how a customer is representing to your business with call recordings. Furthermore, VoIP phone systems can easily integrate with CRMs like Salesforce to monitor leads and sales generation.

3. Set working hours

Using VoIP, business owners can remotely set working hours for their employees. Features such as Auto-Attendant (call routing) can set lunch and break hours alongside regular office hours. 

Helping ‘work from home’ days feel more like office hours giving structure to the day. These hours can be set individually and business owners can view which user has what hours set. What’s more, VoIP enables reports to be processed and analysed according to each individual’s system making it easy to manage their progress.

4.Teamwork

VoIP allows employees to collaborate seamlessly with voice and video conference calling and chat features. Business owners would be able to check-in with their employees while also holding meetings with their team members and clients. 

Video conferencing allows team members to stay connected while getting their work done within teams, lowering the feeling of loneliness and creating a sense of unity. Cost savings alert - calls to other employees numbers are completely free allowing peace of mind when ringing colleagues.

5. Affordability

Having employees set up their own home offices can be pricey. For example, having a business landline built-in could set small businesses back by £140. VoIP phone systems just need an internet connection and desktop and/or mobile app making it significantly cheaper and easy for employees to work from home. 

VoIP phone systems offer up to 92% savings on telecom maintenance allowing significant resources to be freed up for other expenditures. 

Other remote working tools

There are other tools your team can use alongside a VoIP phone system to stay productive and increase collaboration. For example, Trello and Asana can aid in workflow and keeping track of tasks and priorities for the workweek. These apps combined with a VoIP phone system can create the perfect solution for employees who need to work from home for whatever the reason.

Download our guide!

To see how a bOnline VoIP phone system can fit into your small business communications get our free guide! Or speak to an expert advisor today on 0203 697 4166.