One snafu that some organizations might encounter is around infrastructure and licensing. Johnson says IT teams might need to add more firewall licenses or boost server capacity to accommodate increased concurrent remote access to the network -- another hidden cost.
Gibbs advises using instrumentation such as dashboards to make sure that the objectives of your alternate work-schedule project are being met and that you're not negating the positives with unexpected costs. If you're focused on providing access for employees, make sure you monitor and measure all the resources they use, including cell phones, voice over IP, applications and laptops. If you're focused on providing customer service while your business is closed, then you need customer experience tracking tools to guarantee you're meeting their needs.
Fletcher agrees and has deployed monitoring tools that help him record customer usage on the day off as well as application and network performance. That way, he can report back to state executives on the customer experience and the effectiveness of the project.
Sandra Gittlen is a freelance technology editor in the US.