Over half (59%) of all UK businesses are now offering employees the chance to work from home, according to the latest figures from the Confederation of British Industry, and there has been a rapid expansion over recent years thanks to the improvement of teleworking services and the provision of career breaks and sabbaticals.
In addition, almost all companies (96%) now offer one form of flexible working or another, which could range from flexi-time to working from home, and many are considering introducing additional arrangements, that can boost staff morale and make the business more cost effective and efficient.
As flexible working becomes the norm, you need to make sure that your business isn’t left behind, and while it can make life easier, it also brings with it its own set of problems, notbaly making sure that people are constantly in contact with one another for those discussions and team meetings that can be invaluable to a business.
And that’s why you’ll need to make sure that you have a facility that enables you and your staff to quickly and easily set up a conference call – thankfully, there are a few great tools out there that let you do exactly that!
So here are three great conference calling tools that will suit your business whatever its size or budget…
ConferenceCall.co.uk is the latest website to offer quick, easy and cheap conference calling facilites to any type of business user – the best thing about this service though, is that there is no need to sign up to any contract or even share any information so you know that you won’t suddenly be bombarded with promotional emails from them or any ‘selected partners’.
All you have to do is go to the homepage and you will be guided through how to set up a conference call in three easy steps, which basically involves getting a PIN code and then copying, pasting and finally sending an email to your colleagues.
Conference calls can be set up within the UK for as little as 5p per minute, while prices vary for international conference calls, for instance, calls to Germany are 9 cents per minute while US conference calls are charged at local rates.
2. Skype
When Skype came along it changed the face of telecommunications as it allowed users to make free calls to other Skype members – and business users can also take advantage of its service by using it to make any type of business call, including conference calls.
With Skype for Business you can hold video or voice calls with three or more people from anywhere in the world as well as providing callers with additional information using the instant messaging service and share files of any size at the click of a button.
While the service is free to use, all participants must register with Skype and will have to install a Windows Installer Package (MSI) on their system – which could prove problematic for Apple users or anyone that does not have sufficient privileges to install software on their PC.
3. Rondee
Rondee is another conference calling facility that works very much like ConferenceCall.co.uk in that it offers a dial-in service with PIN code access.
The ways in which it differs slightly though are that you do have to sign up for an account but this means that you choose you own personal PIN code for callers to use as well as customise greetings tones as other people join the call and record and save any calls to keep a transcript of exactly who called, when they called and what was discussed.
Other features include a listen-only service, for which a different PIN is allocated and you can also schedule calls, for which Rondee both sends invites and tracks responses, or simply call on demand.
