teleworker
What’s the difference between a “teleworker” and a “mobile worker”? Increasingly, not very much. Last week we discussed what organizations should do in order to make sure their companies are “teleworker-friendly”. But here’s the thing: mobile workers—folks who work often or exclusively outside of offices—are basically teleworkers, too.
Take a travelling executive participating in a webinar from the road. She pulls into a rest stop, fires up the laptop, plugs in a headset, and is able to participate in the webinar, while sending Ms and email in the background. Sounds just like a normal day at the office—the only difference being that the connectivity is, for instance, EVDO rather than Ethernet.
Nearly 16% of enterprise workers are already mobile, on average, and more expected to be each year. In essence, many of these employees are teleworkers—though they may not be officially acknowledged as such. And, with the rise of built-in mobility, the distinction between, say, a mobile-enabled laptop and an intelligent phone is diminishing rapidly. Thirty-eight percent of organizations are adding or expanding iPhone support for their mobile workers. Netbooks are clearly on the rise, too.
The implication? Your UC roadmap needs to take mobility into consideration. Business processes like “just-in-time-fetch-the-expert” and services like “find-me-follow-me” should ultimately integrate location information (such as GPS or cell-site proximity) so you’re fetching the closest (physically) available expert. IM presence will one day include physical presence, so users can discover whether the person they’re communicating with is just down the hall, or at an airport halfway across the globe. It’s all coming. The important thing is to keep in mind that mobile workers really are just untethered teleworkers.
