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It just helps you manage your life
in a better way, if you like, without compromising.
My name's Ian Gould. I'm the product manager
here in EMEA
i look after the wireless and software products.
Typically in the mornings...i can work from home
we tend to have conference calls with europe
early in the morning, then I come into the office and do sort of my day to day
tasks if you like
and in the evening we call the US so then I'll probably go back home
so I set up a real transient approach to it.
Provided our associates have clear goals on what's expected of them,
their productivity is measured on results, not on times
it's not the hours you put in the day, it's the work you put in the hours
that are important. You have to trust your associates within the Smarter Working process
In the last couple years technology has improved drastically.
Specifically broadband
access to broadband
you know is a very very important part this whole puzzle
and these devices are getting lighter, faster and thinner.
And you can do more with them so technologies really catching up now
and really enabling this way of working.
And obviously from a communication point of view, we're constantly connected with audio
yeah, so i can make telephone calls on this or this at any time.
What we do behind the scenes to enable smarter workers to do their jobs
is that we provide reliable and resilient network infrastructure.
We provide sufficient bandwidth to allow people to connect to our network
whether that's working from the office working from home
or working somewhere else
so all the data
is secure
so people have secure tunnelled access to our networks.
My work/life balance has become much much better
I can get more done at work
you know, i can do the things i like to do outside of work
and I can also
keep the family happy too so it's a hundred percent improved
i know it sounds a bit of a cliché but it is.
Smarter Working brings great benefits to Plantronics
but most noticeably it's in our business responsiveness and
agility. We've had a fairly bad winter and by having
Smarter Working practices at Plantronics
we've not seen any of the negative impacts of that bad weather. We've managed to
work on through it. So in terms of agility it really allows a business
to stay at the top of its game. But, even beyond that, business can look at
the real estate investments. Here at Plantronics we had
four thousand four hundred square meters. We now have just under
two thousand square meters and that's flexible working practices formalised
that allow us to do that.
Beyond all of those things of course, some of the softer things like
allowing us to recruit from a larger geographical area
and finally of course, for the employee, it just allows them more control of their life
a better work/life balance
so all round, both for Plantronics and for our employees: Smarter Working makes sense.
Everything has to be fifty fifty, it has to be fair. So you're getting
what some regard to be a good perk
but the flipside is you do work longer.
But it's not really an issue because you sort of map it into the spare times that you've got.