A flexible workplace equals 20% more productivity

Allowing your workforce to use tablets, smartphones and access email on the move can give your business an extra 40 days a year more work for free, and have a real positive influence on productivity

A poll of IT managers in 700 businesses by IBM has found that three quarters said they're moving their employees on to mobile devices because a flexible workplace delivers a 20 percent improvement in employee productivity.

To put that figure in perspective, that's equal to an extra day a week worth of work for every employee in the business, or around 40 days additional work per year, or one extra person for free for every five employees, just by allowing your employees to bring their own smartphones, mobiles and laptops to work.

The businesses in the IBM "Going Mobile and Getting Results" survey said they are significantly reducing the cost of doing business by decreasing dependence on email, improving their social collaboration and adopting cloud technologies to reach mobile workers.

Of the businesses polled;

• 65% reduced their use of email
• 76% used cloud technology
• 74% used social collaboration tools

The survey by IBM is also backed up by figures from analysts IDC which predicts business use of smartphones will reach 62 percent by 2014, and in a recent survey by The Aberdeen Group it found that 72 percent of responding companies allowed the practice known as BYOD—bring your own device – which allows employees to use their own smartphones, tablets and laptops to do their work instead of using business-approved devices.

IBM's Bob Sutor, vice president for IBM Mobile Platform, supports this and at the IBM Impact show in Las Vegas, said that "it was not ridiculous to imagine that within 10 years, BYOD would be the industry standard."