Kevin Buckley, Co-Founder and CEO, Spearline, sat down with me for an exclusive interview about the new reality concerning the state of remote work. As companies scramble to outfit employees with VPNs at scale, enterprises encounter trials and should plan to face them for the duration of the COVID period. Cisco recently said its rationing 100,000+ VPNs to deal with the flood of traffic stemming from the novel Coronavirus, just to give some insight into the very real issues companies, even some of the biggest enablers of remote work face.
Buckley told me, now more than ever, enterprises should focus on another principal component – worker connectivity, adding: “Employees should have the capability of communicating with customers across the globe.” During the pandemic, and in an attempt to keep employees up and running, Buckley said Spearline’s sole purpose is to ensure the highest-quality call connectivity standard.
He also told UC Today readers, Spearline’s focus on large contact centers and multinationals in every industry, adding its employees now work hard (from home) to test quality, connection, latency, putting Spearline in a position to render quality aid while telecoms operations encounter higher-than-usual usage metrics.
“We recognize the world is forever changed, and working from home or remote working is a fundamental part of our day-to-day environment. And, we, like everyone else, want to build toward overcoming all challenges”
According to Buckley, connectivity is critical for companies with global contact centers. To him, these organizations amount to some of the hardest hit by COVID-19. Contact centers are often team-based, and driven by call statistics, with screens on the wall to ensure agents meet metrics. Everyone works in the same space, including team leaders.
With more teams presently working from home, corporations have to trust that employees will emerge more energetic than the pre-COVID-19 period in history. “Trust has to be right across the employee spectrum all the time.” This is why Buckley said he presumes companies will strive by extending more trust, flexibility, autonomy, and authority to employees.
He added, “And when working from home, it might stun you how much more productive people can be. It might also surprise you how much more time they can have for a personal life and family time.” Such balance would not fall short of molding an employee who is happier, more dedicated, loyal, and willing to stay with a company for the long run if they feel leadership trusts them.
And quality is a big part of team collaboration, too. “Like most business leaders, I love to collaborate, and I love to get a team into a room, but there’s no denying it’s different in a remote working environment,” raising a sound position.
What about employee happiness and, virtually interacting with people? No technology will ever replace human-to-human experiences, but technology, especially right now, is a great vehicle for enabling social interactions. And people will adapt, it’s evolution, Buckley argues. “It’s about good practices, staying with a routine, and using the tools that enable reliable and secure workplace collaboration.” Before COVID-19 took center stage in the news cycle, Buckley informed me, Spearline already had a flexible working strategy, something he holds all companies should consider.