Article posted on Mar 13
I had a really interesting phone call this morning with Michael Clark, the Western Region General Manager for Midmarket Customers for Microsoft (Holy crap, how’s that for a Title??) regarding a press release put out earlier this week by Microsoft, rating Us cities on how accommodating they are for remote workers.
In this study Utah ranks #4 overall, and #1 specifically for “How supportive is your boss or manager for remote working arrangements.”
The top 3 cities (from 1 to 3) were: Sand Diego, West Palm Beach Florida, and Buffalo NY.
In my conversation wit Michael, one of the things that I really wanted to know was why Microsoft had undertaken such a survey. Businesses tend to do things that benefit them. Is this so that Microsoft can find the best cities to setup shop, or is it because they want to get out a marketing message? The real answer from Michael was that (in relation to their customers) they want to better “…understand their attitude on certain trends.”
Further, Michael discussed that in the current economic climate that companies are really looking to try to find solutions to three key questions:
1- How to I save money?
2- How do I become more productive, and innovate my way out of this dilemma?
3- How do I retain my best people (and attract more)?
Microsoft feels that in answering these questions, and solving these problems, that more and more companies are considering expanding their support for remote workers. Michael expressed that Microsoft is working on a suite of products that helps to eliminate the need of facetime, and replace it with the ability to have “presence” (no, not presents… sorry folks.)
They have already (as the press release details) released drive encryption, and strong network encryption to help protect sensitive data, even in the event of a laptop theft. Michael went on to state that we will be seeing a comprehensive IM, Email, security, Voice, Video and web conferencing pack that helps enable collaboration.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of it. As an employer myself, I find that one of the biggest hurdles is how to really give me insight and piece of mind that remote workers are being productive, while not becoming even more busy work to track tasks and time, and not becoming so much of a “big brother.” Maybe I should just require that all remote workers move back in with their mom, and get a note from her promising to keep them on task? 
Interesting to hear that about SLC. I’ve been thinking about relocating there for some time now — remote working makes that easier.
[...] in cities with lower overall cost of living and great experiences is a big draw. In fact, in a Recent study commissioned by Microsoft Utah was found to be the #4 most “work from home friendly” state in the nation. [...]