When deploying and managing a remote workforce, it often becomes difficult to manage how employees connect to your business communication services. This is especially true when you need to provide mobile LTE devices and data connectivity, where employees may not be able to access home fibre. Costs for data usage can quickly escalate and the blurring between work and personal usage also becomes a problem factor. In some cases, employees may even be submitting personal expense claims for data usage on their own devices / data plan and therefore you are never quite sure what is genuine business usage or indeed personal usage.
How Can You reduce employees mobile data usage?
In either scenario above, it would be a good idea to educate employees on how they can help conserve their data usage.
Both mobile devices (on either Android or IOS) and laptops and tablets have features that you can enable to help conserve data usage without compromising the quality of communication.
Let’s take a look at some of the most common and easy ways in which to conserve data consumption. Most mobile devices have the feature to limit data usage using some or many of the following:
- Restricting app background data is a setting that you can choose on almost any mobile device.
- You can also set data alerts to check on cellular usage.
- Chrome the popular web browser, also has a feature to switch to Chrome-Lite mode.
- When a mobile phone needs to install updates, you can also choose the option to only enable this when connected to Wifi rather than using a mobile data plan.
- Google maps, for when people are on the move, also has a feature to cache Google maps for offline use.
- Consider educating employees to limit streaming services.
- Make sure your teams have virus and malware software enabled on their devices, this can avoid both security vulnerabilities and avoid rogue applications running and chomping data, without the user even being aware of what is happening.
- Ask employees to only download large files when they are connected to Wifi.
- Potentially turn off mobile data when they are not requiring such connectivity.
At the same time, we also need to be cognisant of employee engagement and motivation levels. So, there’s a balance to empowering them but at the same time making them aware of any negative cost implications through poor data usage and hygiene. At the end of the day, the higher the operational costs, the greater impact on overall profitability which in turn impacts employees sales incentives, bonus payments and annual wage increases. Don’t feel bad about making such policy decisions or running awareness training. If positioned as a benefit to an employee they will engage with any policies or education in a more understanding and positive mind-set.
Increase efficiency and reduce costs
Mytelnet offers a communications platform as part of its services. The platform enables the following features in one data-efficient hub:
- Voice calls and conferencing
- Video calls and conferencing
- Instant messaging and chat
This platform is fully secure “end to end” helping protect your company’s information and intellectual property while helping increase employee efficiency.
You can read more about Communication Platforms in this article, where we breakdown a summary of what a communications platform is and its benefits. The article also has some advice on questions that you should consider when choosing a communications solution.
Another consideration when managing a remote workforce is the connection that you choose to deploy. Any communications platform is only as good as the data connection that enables the service. In addition to residential and business fibre, Mytelnet offers flexible and cost-effective LTE options, from fixed LTE to mobile LTE solutions.
The real power of data and connectivity is how it can make your business more efficient and profitable. To find out more about our business fibre and LTE services, contact us and be a part of the business communication revolution.