Office 365 Lowers Administration Costs

Office 365 Lowers Administration  Office 365 is more stable than most servers and networks. For a moderate sized site collection of say 250 users accessing an average 8-12 subsites (departmental sites, projects, etc.), administering it requires only an hour a day, more or less. Plus 1-2 hours a week for general updates, audits, checking usage & quotas, etc. Add in user changes and password changes requests and you might reach 4 hours a day….maybe. You’ve got maybe 25 hours a week.
That is why you see those IT nerds playing comptuer games in their offices! Not that they are not worth their paychecks, they absolutely are! But it drives managers crazy when a worker is not “nose to the grindstone” every minute they are at work. With the value theya dd, it is not an hourly job but an “as-needed” job where they are being paid their value to the company. Many people have a problem seeing that as they think the old fashoned way – you get paid to punch the clock and keep your nose to the grindstone during those hours moving sidgets along the assemblyline. But that is not how IT works. In fact the world of “work” is changing across the board.
That is why I strongly believe workers should be allowed to work from home. Let’s face it, remote work is more productive than onsite. Employees are more relaxed, get home tasks done during slow periods, office costs are reduced (no rent!), no wasting time and stress in a commute, etc. Granted not all work can be done remotely and not all employees can be trusted to be dedicated to their work with all the distractions & temptations (TV, chores, kids (who should be wherever they were when you went into the office), having a beer (or three), and more).
But, where possible, 80% of the time, it is a win-win for everyone and that translates into profit (again…for everyone!). Honest employees who like to work will value the priviledge of working form home. They have to discipline themselves to send the kids to wherever they used to go when they went tot he office, avoid long chats with friends, focus on their work to improve productivity, etc. They can save taking time off for the cable or repair guy (“We will be at your residence between 1 and 4 pm. An adult must be available to give us access.”).
Studies have repeatedly proven that remote work works well enough that everyone, especially the company, wins! So why the resistance? One can always assume it is the neanderthal tradition of shallow, insecure supervisors who think they must prove their worth by “watching” their employees as if they are ogoing to suddenly break out a lounge chair and iced tea and goof off, and this does have a lot of merit. But also it is change, the paradigm of doing something different after generations of lording it over clock punchers who don’t want to be there.
Several recent studies note that while Europeans are reducing their work hours (Germany is moving toward a 28 hour work week!), Americans like to pour on the hours averaging 44 per week and even working through “vacations”. Part of this is due to the stagnant wages that has beed steady for 40 years. Extreme hours becomes the only way to increase one’s income. That is a SAD statement of how mired in a rut American industry and society has become!
What is it going to take to loosen Americans fearful grip on this trap and get them to not be afraid to enjoy a little free time? To their surprise, they will probably find that they like their work even more. Then and only then will Americans raise their “happiness” level following the European model. Work will be based more on actual production rather than how hard you worked to achieve it. It is not how hard you work that matters in the end, but the production as well as employee morale that matters.