Elly Yates-Roberts |
Over the past couple of years, environmental, social and governance (ESG) programmes have become increasingly important to businesses – especially those operating at the enterprise and public sector level. At the same time, there has been an increase in cloud adoption due to the pandemic.
Chris Wade, chief marketing and product officer at Gamma, says both points are related and that unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) solutions will play an important role with regard to ESG programmes and cloud adoption.
How can UCaaS technology help organisations to operate more sustainably?
One significant way businesses could improve their green credentials is by reducing the number of employees travelling. UCaaS solutions allow employees to communicate and collaborate efficiently, regardless of location. As the technology continues to evolve, virtual interactions will become richer and more seamless, reducing the need to travel and, subsequently, cutting carbon emissions.
In what way can Gamma help its customers to optimise their communications while reaching their environmental goals?
Gamma’s vision is to empower people to work smarter, together. During the pandemic, solutions such as Microsoft Teams became a staple to enable employees to stay connected while being physically apart. It’s now time for businesses to add an extra, fundamental layer by integrating telephony into the same solution. By making internal and external communications more seamless and reliable, our Microsoft Teams telephony proposition limits the need for face-to-face meetings and empowers staff to work from anywhere in the world. This can help businesses to significantly reduce their carbon footprint, while improving overall efficiency.
Our cloud-based telephony solutions don’t require additional hardware expenditure, enabling businesses to reduce their electricity consumption and carbon emissions. Plus, hardware doesn’t need to be replaced as often, decreasing the need for manufacturing and recycling.
Additionally, relying on one provider for all communication can facilitate ESG reporting and provide increased transparency within an organisation. Gamma can provide end-to-end solutions for all communications and collaboration needs, with a tailored approach to every business’s individual requirement.
To what extent are Gamma’s solutions helping to improve employees’ mental well-being?
Flexibility is vital to ensure employees can strike the right work-life balance. A recent study by Finder showed that 62 per cent of remote workers want employers to provide better technology that helps them stay connected with their colleagues.
Gamma’s Microsoft Teams telephony solutions can help businesses make the most of their existing tools and give their employees one unified solution to communicate externally and internally. This reduces frustration, increases productivity, and gives employees more freedom to stay connected through a single easy-to-use platform.
UCaaS technology also allows businesses to widen and diversify the talent pool by including people who may be physically disabled or limited in their ability to travel to the office, employees who may need a more flexible working approach, or those who live in different geographies.
To implement flexible working and UCaaS solutions successfully, organisations need to completely shift their culture and way of working. Onboarding, training and workforce adoption will need to sit firmly at the heart of any business strategy and technology deployment. This is why a huge part of our role as a provider consists of understanding our customers’ needs, requirements, culture and vision before we move to the deployment stage.
How has Gamma managed to achieve both of the aforementioned goals during the pandemic?
From a well-being perspective, we responded rapidly to the outbreak of the pandemic, quickly transitioning our workforce to remote working. This was of course possible thanks to the adoption of our own cloud solutions, which facilitate flexible working to this day. Around the same time, we also launched a ‘well-being channel’ using Microsoft Teams. The purpose of the channel was to keep connected and engage with staff during the pandemic and beyond.
From an environmental perspective, sustainability has always been a key focus for Gamma, well before the pandemic. We’ve been a carbon neutral company since 2006, and we are committed to continuously reducing our impact on the environment across our services. This ensures an extra level of support for customers to achieve their sustainability goals, and it’s reflected in the solutions we develop and provide.
This article was originally published in the Spring 2022 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.