If you are in the UK and London in particular, 2018 started off well until you went on your first commute to work.

London Bridge station did open, on the positive side, but along with fare hikes of 3.4% came delays to your travel.

Neither I nor the company I work for can intervene with TfL on your behalf, however I would like to share a few stories from our clients and my colleagues about flexible working environments and having the tech to back you up.

Personally, I have been late for two meetings thanks to severe delays in 2017. For someone who likes to have at least a 10-minute prep and tech test beforehand, any delay is anxiety inducing.

The worst part? It’s hard to catch up and even tougher figuring out what happened after. Well it’s easier for me nowadays.

Some background for first time visitors: our clients use our platform for senior and board level meetings, and as our app allows for remote meetings employees can work remotely too (I am writing this from Stockholm, and my colleagues are in rural England and Parisienne suburbs).

Our Head of Office in the UK, has gotten off delayed trains en route (at a station of course) and headed over to a café to make a meeting on time a number of times.

The CEO of our parent company has to travel a lot; so it’s a combination of Convene, Skype and WhatsApp that keeps him in the know. Less of WhatsApp these days as our developers built in a chat/messaging function in Convene.

When I joined the company back in 2016, I remember being impressed with the extent to which colleagues used the system themselves and that it was built because members of the board were travelling frequently, and a printed board pack or a standard digital document storage system was not secure enough.

Having an app built for digital meetings means more than just secure document storage. It also means that group notes, action items and post meeting follow-ups. It also means an easier presentation that does not involve screen sharing for those leading the meeting nor for those following it.

Special Olympics Ireland told us about how they found our digital meeting solution different and unexpectly better to what they had been used too before:

We had one board member, who was involved on the finance side of things and was vital to the successful running of the meeting, but he couldn’t attend in person. Instead he did so on the phone and followed the whole meeting on his iPad back at home. It’s amazing how that functionality is taken for granted in the space of 18 months. It’s expected now.

Physical being present for every meeting is sometimes impossible. What’s worse is rescheduling an important meeting for one or two people, who are going through the trauma of a 30-minute delay on a packed train.

2018 might not have had the best start to getting to work on time, however a flexible workplace with the right digital tools will help you and your colleagues get things done on time.

Lavaniya Das

Written by Lavaniya Das

Lavaniya Das is the Head of UK and EU Content at Azeus Convene UK.

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