A Silicon.com article, Public sector still shunning flexi-working, says the UK public sector is still failing to embrace flexible working, despite the highly publicised benefits of staff retention and increased productivity. The article underlines that many daily tasks and chores could be performed anywhere if appropriate remote working solutions (extranets would be prime example) were put in place.
Research from email management firm Kinomi found that almost two thirds of public sector staff spend at least 30 minutes per day searching for emails and almost one fifth spend more than an hour per day doing so. This equates to a worrying 20 hours per month spent on a task which could be done from anywhere an employee is able to connect to work email and could easily be fitted in around a more flexible approach to work.
What the article doesn’t suggest is avoiding use of email altogether. Some of today’s construction collaboration technologies – BIW Information Channel is a good example – have email-type functionality that retains all such communications within the application, with search tools to help users find past emails. And being web-based it can, of course, be used anywhere anytime.
