Working from home (WFH) has gone from an evolutionary trend to a mass movement instigated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the early days of the pandemic, businesses were forced to adopt WFH as a matter of survival, but their motivation is changing with many now seeing WFH as part of a broader strategy to optimise operations across physical and digital worlds. WFH, on its own or as part of a hybrid “work from anywhere” environment, is likely to feature in business plans for the foreseeable future – impacting employees, processes and technology.
The number and variety of stakeholders and interactions increases to support working from home. Business IT functions must work with homeworkers and telco/ISPs, homeworkers must maintain good home connectivity (and physically connect devices within their home), telcos have a role in supporting the business IT function (e.g. monitoring service quality and maintaining service capacity). Businesses must plan to assume responsibility for accommodating, securing and managing this variety to provide business-grade networking standards. This requires better coordinated connectivity solutions.
Telcos are uniquely positioned to provide such coordinated solutions, as they touch every part of the service delivery chain. Consumer (personal) and business connectivity are core telco competencies which can be brought together to address this opportunity:
- Consumer connectivity products should articulate the support for all household needs, including WFH.
- Business products should enable the agility that a business needs to adapt to future changes, while easily embracing their employees’ consumer connectivity.
Telcos have an opportunity to help businesses with strategic WFH initiatives by providing well-positioned WFH-optimised services.