Business leaders in the Philippines now trust their employees to work remotely, according to a survey commissioned by business communication applications provider Avaya Inc. The study shows that 75 percent of Filipino managers now trust their staff to telecommute and 68 percent believe that allowing employees to telecommute improves their productivity.

?Companies now are looking for ways for people to become more productive, said Edgar Doctolero, country director of Avaya Philippines. According to Doctolero, the positive response among Philippine companies to telecommuting did not really come as a surprise anymore. "That"s what we are seeing, especially in the financial services market like insurance and in the contact center industry.?

According to Avaya, technological advances in handheld devices have played a large role in the shift in perception of senior managers towards telecommuting, with 66 percent of Filipino executives nowadays carrying two or more mobile devices like mobile phones and laptops, on most days for business-related communications.

The Avaya-commissioned study revealed positive attitudes by Asia Pacific?s business leaders towards telecommuting as working remotely fast becomes a way of life in Asia. Over two-thirds of the 2,000 business executives surveyed from 11 countries believe that greater employee mobility gives their organization a competitive edge not only by improving employees? productivity but also their work-life balance.

?It?s not about increasing revenue but more of decreasing cost of operations and employee satisfaction,? said Carolyn Nguyen, director of Avaya Mobility Strategy of Avaya UK Ltd., when asked how to measure employee productivity and savings. According to her, 60 percent of the cost of employees is due to real estate, or the office space and infrastructure, which is why there are now companies renting or outsourcing part of their operations to contact centers which are often staffed by customer service agents working from home.

Participating in the survey were 1,661 executives from 222 companies in the country, which showed that Philippine executives now greatly favor telecommuting for their employees. According to Doctolero, Philippine executives, when asked about the benefits of mobility to an organization, understand mobility best, especially in three major areas: improved employee productivity, enhanced customer service, and new business opportunities.

Nguyen agreed by saying that sometimes, managers have higher expectations when employees telecommute since mobility allows people to work wherever they go and stay in touch with the office at all times.

For the employees? part, Nguyen also believes that most employees end up working longer hours and performing better when working remotely from home. Nguyen said the key is for employees to strike the right work-life balance, which is exactly what telecommuting has made possible.

Another advantage of telecommuting, according to Nguyen, is increased employee satisfaction, ?Employees are less likely to leave the company because they are a lot happier with their work-life balance," she said. Nguyen stressed, however, that to achieve this work-life balance, telecommuters would have to be equipped with the proper technology to ensure productivity. This is where, Nguyen claims, Avaya?s business communication solutions would come in handy for a mobile working environment.

Avaya has a line of business solutions available for various mobility needs -- for home, on-campus, or roaming, that is, extremely mobile, customers. Avaya is currently working with Nokia to address the emerging market for enterprise Fixed to Mobile Convergence (FMC) voice solutions that would integrate fixed and mobile line networks in the enterprise. The offering from the companies will include a dual-mode voice session with Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) that can make and receive both mobile and wireless calls over both mobile and wireless local area networks (WLAN), both on and off a company campus.

Avaya has also partnered with mobility solutions provider Research in Motion to deliver Avaya enterprise communications applications to the RIM BlackBerry platform over WLANs also using SIP. SIP is a recent industry standard that can streamline integration between multiple types of communication applications, including Web, Internet Protocol (IP) telephony, and e-mail.

With their offerings of business mobility solutions, Avaya wishes to stress the importance of one-number connectivity in organizations to manage employee communications more effectively in and out of the office.

?Being reachable with just one number is vital in today?s highly competitive and increasingly dispersed working environment,? said Doctolero. He added that with the right enterprise telephony services, managers can easily interact with telecommuting employees and monitor performance, while making office transactions transparent to customers and colleagues.

All the products are now available worldwide simultaneously, according to Nguyen, who added that the reception has been overwhelmingly positive so far.