Where You are is not Important Anymore

With today’s state of technology, it does not matter where in the world you are to do many types of work.  If you work in non-manufacturing, then you have a better than 60% chance that it can be done remotely and the current research indicates that you will be more productive than your office-bound counterpart and you will be a happier employee. Your employer benefits also by lower his costs of providing workspace and perks that come with offices for you.

Telecommuting Considerations

There are some real things you have be aware when deciding where you want to work from before you land there.

• Time zones -If the rest of your team is several time zones away it can mean that you are working at times the rest of your world is relaxing or sleeping. So make sure you can live with the adjustments you will have to make.
• Work Space -You still need to be in places where you can focus and engage with other in a quiet environment. Sometimes working from home is not ideal when there is no go to space that you can slip into for need calls and concentrate work times. Some people have found Co-Work locations provide the environment and also the social context that they need to work effectively.
• Social -Some of us just need to have people around us for some reasons to help product at work. Being a telecommuter means you are not with your work colleagues for a coffee or break together. You need to build these relationships by making special efforts on your part, and by finding groups locally, that can be a substitute for them. Many people use MeetUp meeting as one way to find the face to face connection that they need in their work lives.
• Location -Not all town roll out the welcome mat for you. Many small towns that do not have a lot of people turn over are not as open to newcomers.  If you want to move to a small town or the country, try it out for a month or two before you make a longer-term commitment to the area. It is one the advantage of your job is where you work doesn’t matter.  In fact, if you want to be one of those people that have a couple of places to live throughout the year than telecommuting is a perfect answer for you.
• Transportation -If you have to go to the office or visit clients than you need to consider how far away you can be. Some job that indicates telecommuting are just home-based work that needs to be nearby. So is it a short car ride, an airplane trip or a day-long trek to get to where you need to be and how often do you need to do it? Can you accept the challenges of doing it? Also if you need to ship things back and forth not all locations have next day services. So know what your options are before committing to a place
• Broadband -Without you can not do the telecommuting thing period. It is the general availability of broadband that has truly enabled the remote work location for workers. SO know for sure whether it is available and is it highest enough performance for you do your work from that location. It also is a good idea to make sure that there is more than one provider just in case something changes.

What is your telecommuting story? Tell us by leaving comments below.

Autos and Remote Working

Working in the car is different.  Getting on a conference call is no big deal while driving, OK you should be doing hands-free, but trying to do a lot of the things you usually do in your office is not anywhere as easy. I recently have taken a new job, and it is great, but I need to have to drive back to HQ occasionally and is a six hours drive each way making for some long days and nights too.

The second challenge is that it, not highway drive that you set the speed control and forget about until they get to the final exit to your destination. No, I go through small town and villages that have the local sheriff’s just waiting for an out of state car to come through and give them a speed ticket.

Working In the Car

Newer cars have made hands free calls much easier, but it still means that you have to split your awareness to both the caller/meeting and the road. What has worked for you share your successes in the comments below?

Have you already started to let employees work outside of your offices? Sure Sales have been doing it forever, right? But what about the jobs that have not traditionally been done somewhere else. In today’s hyper-connected world it is almost impossible for business not to be working from everywhere, but the question is you covering your corporate rear-end?

Many companies have just let remote work happen without planning or forethought, and some have put together some standard teleworking forms that employees signed and quickly forget about. With about 3.4 million people in the USA alone working remotely that employees and you can double it if you include freelancers you need to have a well throughout a set of policies and tools to assure your business is covered.  We have been helping businesses plan, execute and thrive in a remote workforce no matter where their team is in the world.

What is your company’s Remote Work like? Please share with us here in the comments section below.

Work Remote?

What does it mean to you to be a Remote Worker?  We at to 2BMobile have been working on our definition of what Remote Work means to us.  We consider it a catch-all phrase that covers any worker that does not perform work at their employer’s place of work.  That is a broader definition than many other terms currently in use by people.

Examples of all the names used; telecommuter, teleworker, home-base, co-work worker, and Internet worker all describe someone who trading the employer’s workplace for another fixed base of work.

Whereas terms like road warrior, nomad, digital nomad and etc imply that the worker is in some state of travel and is not normally confined to a fixed location.

With all these different labels that are used tends to make splinter these workers. In many groups. We do not see it that way. Instead, we see working outside of the employer workplaces as one continuum of work options.

Mobile from Road to Home

For many people traveling and working is just part of the norm. Some of us are occasional travelers, and others are always moving as part of their work.  In the normal major metro areas, the wireless connection is excellent, but once you start to travel to outside these telecommunication bubbles, then things get less dependable.

Our regular mobile readers know we have been focused on how to be productive while on the road, but we have not been covering the unique needs of those who work remotely from home. It was not our intent to exclude them, but we have been over the years more focused on trying to help the professional who had to travel or was outside of their office for the majority of their workday. Maybe that because that where we came from and had the most experience to help.

But today most of our team members work remotely, and as a team, we have gone through some challenges that remote workers face. So moving forward we will be including more articles, postings, and best practices focused on remote worker’s needs.

We want to get your comments on what are your biggest pains in working as a remote employee. Please leave your comments below

When I started 2BMobile, we were thinking about mobility as freeing professional people from their offices by using mobile devices; smartphones, laptops, and Netbooks (what are they?). Today with smartphones and tablets in the hands of almost everyone, mobility has taken a giant step forward in the quest of a truly virtual worker and Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) to work. The apps keep driving the independents from any one physical device to allow us the freedom to pick up where ever and whenever we want to.

Ok, the communication part is not perfect, I still can get caught in black holes of cellular and WiFi connectivity but even they are greatly improved in terms of speed and coverage.

One dimension of our quest for the genuinely virtual worker though has not leaped forward as the technology has and that is the physical limitation of a physical world.  I may be connected almost anywhere electronically but being too far away from the metropolis of the world has a direct impact on your ability to perceived as viable by your clients.

Over the upcoming months of 2018, we will investigate what it means to be mobile in a technologically advanced world.

What is your opinion on the state of mobility today? Please give me your thoughts and comments below.

The definitions:

Mobile Worker

An employee who does not have one fixed place of work.  Mobile workers are linked to a central base by telephone and sometimes by computer technology.  A teleworker is a form of a mobile worker.

Knowledge Worker

knowl·edge work·er (plural knowl·edge work·ers) noun

Definition:

The employee in knowledge-based industry: somebody working in an industry such as management consultancy or computer programming that produces information rather than goods

An employee who deals in information, ideas, and expertise. Knowledge workers are products of the so-called information age, in which the emphasis is on creativity and innovation rather than on maintaining the status quo. According to Peter Drucker, in the new economy, every employee is becoming a knowledge worker.

From MSN’s Encarta

Also…

Every knowledge worker in modern organization is an “executive” if, by virtue of his position or knowledge, he is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and to obtain results. – Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive (1966)

Finally, these new industries differ from the traditional ‘modern’ industry in that they will employ predominantly knowledge workers rather than manual workers. – Peter Drucker in The Age of Discontinuity (1969)

A key reason for why I decided to create 2BMobile.com was the continuous growth of the number of mobile-knowledge worker over the last twenty years and the rising needs they have to work effectively outside of traditional workspaces.  What is a mobile-knowledge worker you ask?  Well, I went to look it up and did not find any definition.

My definition is a worker who output is information rather than goods and is not at one fixed place of work (often travel to different locations).  Examples of mobile-knowledge workers are consultants, salespeople, and support specialists.  Whats yours? Please give me your thoughtful comments below.

 

The single biggest difference between a desktop and laptop computer is portability.  This fact alone means you have to take extra steps to protect your laptop from the unscrupulous. I have put together a checklist for you to make you take the basic precautions in securing your laptop for your travels.

Before you leave and something that you should have done already

1. Backing up – Before you even leave your office make sure to back-up all your data files so just in case you something bad happens you will always have copies of them.
2. What’s the Password? – Make sure that you have password protection enabled on your laptop.
3. Strong Enough? – May sure the password is strong one mix up some letters and numbers and throw in an odd car or two.
4. Good Screening – Set your screen saver to a shorter time period before it starts (make sure to check the box next to the minutes that says on resume password protect.
5. Blocked the entrances – Make sure you have a firewall enabled.
6. Spy Stuff – If you have very important documents encrypting the file or folder is a must.
7. Make sure your antivirus software is up to date and running properly.
8. Use an anti-malware software to help protect yourself.
9. If your laptop has a fingerprint reader, webcam with facial recognition software or other types of built-in security feature make sure they are enabled.
10. Multiple Personalities – If you are the only one that uses your computer and you do not have an IT guy who has set the user rights then you are the administrator of your laptop and can do anything.  Consider creating another user say “first name” with limited right restricting the access to the specific program and adding of any new programs.  That way if you leave your computer the bad guys cannot install a malice program.
11. Wi-Fi – Don’t say anything that you would not want everyone to know.  Public (i.e. free) Wi-Fi is great for accessing the web but unless you are using a VPN your communications are open for anyone to sniff out and use. So do not do your online banking or buy something with a credit card transaction unless you want to help strangers live large in Hollywood.
12. Keep it in sight – No matter want else you do you have to keep physical possession of your laptop or else everything only help may it hard for the bad guys to get your data.

Back-up – So I am going to assume that you did buy an external disk drive to backup weekly like I told you in my article for the newbie.  This is by far the easiest way to back up your laptop and again make backing up a habit like before you go to dinner or to workout or even easier schedule it for a time you normally would be away from your laptop.

Remote Work – On The Road Again

Remoteness, not all remote work is the same, and not all remote worker work the same.  To some of us remote means not in the office due to travel to others it is about not having to go to the office. Traveling creates its own set of problems that make being connected and being on the road a challenge. Yes, if you are working in major cities with great mobile and wifi services the hassles are low but as soon as you are working in the rest of the world problems keep popping up for remote worker and staying connected.

WiFi is a staple of modern business life, and plenty of establishments offer free wifi, but the problem of late is too many people are on them which means slow or poor performance at many places and the question of how secure your connection is always a problem.

Mobile connections are good when at 4LTE but become much slower at 3G level.