Philippine employers say ‘yes’ to mobility and telecommuting

In a survey commissioned by Avaya Inc., a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services, findings show that an overwhelming majority of senior decision makers in the Philippines now trust their employees to work remotely and believe that telecommuting improves employees work/life balance.

According to the Avaya commissioned Asia Pacific Business Mobility Survey, an overwhelming 75 percent of Philippine managers surveyed trust their staff to telecommute, as they feel that the ability to work in various environments encourages employee creativity and consequently productivity.

The survey showed that more than  58 percent believe that allowing employees to telecommute improves their productivity. The other major benefits of telecommuting cited include enhanced customer service and seizing new business opportunities.

Technological advances in handheld devices have played a large role in the shift in perception of senior managers to telecommuting, with 35 percent of workers possessing more than two handheld devices for business-related communications.

No longer tethered to their office desks for long hours, 50 percent of senior executives in the Philippines now agree that telecommuting employees will enjoy a more balanced professional and personal lifestyle.

The telephone-based survey, whose primary objective was to understand the impact of mobile technologies on work practices in the region, involved approximately 2,000 business and technology decision makers across 11 Asia Pacific countries. The list of companies includes large local conglomerates and global MNCs across all industries.

Based on the findings, senior managers feel that the effectiveness of mobile technologies as a corporate communications tool can still be improved. Forty percent of the Philippines managers surveyed still have to send an email to chase a voicemail or call someone to let them know of a new email at least once a day.

In fact, 31 percent also indicated that they have missed an important business meeting, customer enquiry or new business opportunity by not being able to call or email someone and a staggering 47 percent have missed important messages because people do not know the best way to reach them.

Avaya’s secure and reliable mobility solutions have been developed to eradicate these problems. With Avaya, mobile workers enjoy enterprise telephony services regardless of their location, access technology, and communications device, making it easier for employees to collaborate and respond rapidly to customers in a multi-vendor, standards-based environment. It can also be dramatically less expensive as a business overhead. Avaya’s Session Initial Protocol (SIP) solutions, for instance, provides a direct, instant connection among multiple media. SIP enables users to specify how and when they would like to be contacted. It runs across a converged IP network and can be used on any IP-capable device, such as a mobile phone, email, instant messaging, IP phone or set top box.  In fact, an internal study conducted by Avaya on the impact of a new unified communications platform on their own 1700-strong global sales force, comprising mostly road warriors, revealed that productivity could potentially be upped by six percent or an incredible 25,500 additional workdays a year!

"With greater innovations in mobile devices, business communications moves to the next level with improved business competitiveness for organizations and a more flexible work-schedule for employees," said Edgar Doctolero, country manager for Avaya Philippines, "Avaya is proud to be defining this new and definitely more balanced working paradigm with our leading-edge mobility solutions that extend intelligent communications at any time, and to any network."