Snow enforces Working from Home

When Britain suffers extremes of weather, we reveal our infrastructure to be unprepared. This doesn't surprise me, but today with snow being dumped all over the capital it brings the whole thing to a grinding hault. Even in the recession, London is still one of the main financial centres of the world and yet our buses, trains and underground have failed to cope. My normal mode of commute was out, motorbikes are never good in ice & snow and yet the Metropolitan line was also shut, I couldn't get in to the office even if I wanted. So I'm in a similar situation to hundreds of thousands of other people, unable to get in to their offices, but should this bring business itself to a halt? No, absolutely not, in today's technological world we should be able to work anywhere and yet how many businesses have invested in the infrastructure to enable such flexible working? Surprisingly few and I'm sure we'll have lots of articles in tomorrow's press about how much the snow has cost businesses*, but it shouldn't, it really shouldn't.

Out of my fifty strong team, four managed to get in to the London office. Did this lack of presence matter? No, not at all. Why? Well, we have the systems in place that enable any employee to work from anywhere and have whatever level of functionality they require. Fundamentally, we have a Remote Access Server which gives full access for anyone with a corporate laptop. For those without such mobile technology we have Webmail, Instant Messenging, remote file access, mobile phones and we can stand up voice, video and web conferences whenever required either on mobile phones or on the internet. All our systems can be administered remotely and our data-centre never needs to be visited. All in all, the team is independant of the office if needs be and today, with the conditions meaning very few people managed to get in to the office, the systems and services function as normal with a full support capability, meaning the majority of staff can continue as normal as long as they've got broadband and a computer.

This isn't rocket science, yet for many it seems to be. It doesn't take a lot to achieve, it isn't even very expensive, it just requires a bit of fore-thought and a small implementation project. RAS is the expensive bit, particularly if SecurIDs are used, but to enable a business to continue to function in the sort of conditions we see today, it's got to be worth it. When London's infrastructure recovers from the snow and ice, my company won't have lost any productivity, in fact we might have been a bit more productive than normal because people weren't having to undertake the daily grind of getting in to the office.

This forced interruption in public transport should be an object lesson in enabling flexible working and the ability to work from home, improving productivity and generally hauling the working environment in to the 21st century. Office-based working is so last century!

*UPDATE: As predicted, business groups have predicted the snow costing £1bn!!

UPDATE2: Silicon.com picked up on this and a re-worked version of this piece is now up on Silicon.com