Mobility Means Productivity

The 40-hour workweek is a joke.
Your employees are working countless hours "off the clock" that you never know about. It's a huge productivity gain for your company. Yet, many enterprises still struggle to take advantage of the wireless technologies and mobile solutions that enable employees to work anytime, anywhere. And, here's the rub: Most employees don't mind the nonstop working that always-on connectivity provides. It's simply up to your company to make it happen.

Redefine The 'Office'
I don't consider myself to be a mobile worker, but a couple of times each month I head to conferences or other events to monitor the goings-on in particular industries. If you look at a recent three-day venture, I swear I got more done on my laptop than my traditional desktop.

Before leaving my hotel each morning, I spent 2 hours answering e-mail, updating my scheduling, and completing actions from the previous day. Still in a funk from a day of interviews and seminars, I managed another 2 hours each night to download notes from the day into my company's contact management system. I responded to a day's worth of e-mail and then went to bed. Add to that total a few more hours of work at the event's wireless cafe and a Starbucks in the airport. All told, my 40-hour week increased by at least 15 hours. I didn't feel overrun. Actually, the wireless connectivity allowed me to eliminate the chance of being overrun once back in the office.

Always-On Connectivity Increases Benefits
The more mobile your workforce, the more your enterprise can benefit from wireless technology. During the course of a month, I can easily pick up an additional 40-hour week by leveraging my laptop, Wi-Fi card, and the Internet in some combination. But, I'm not your typical mobile employee.

In my conversations with mobility vendors, the anecdotal information suggests that many companies are pressing forward to provide always-on connectivity for some of their employees. I recently spoke with executives from Motion Computing, for instance, and they said that many shipments of the company's tablet computers are equipped with WWAN (wireless wide area network) cards that allow connectivity via a wireless carrier such as Sprint or Verizon. Where my connectivity was limited to hotels and hot spots, WWAN connectivity is, well, just about unlimited.

There are very few occasions when employees volunteer themselves to work more hours than you require. But, wireless connectivity seems to erase those barriers. Even employees who complain about working in front of their laptops at all hours acknowledge the chaos that would exist if they didn't have that capability.

This isn't a cry to put laptops in the hands of every employee. But, reconsider your definition of a mobile employee. For the cost of a laptop, you might see some huge productivity gains.