Virtual Office Resource

Dialpad develops its own communications software to support voice, video and messaging for employees that traverse the inside and outside of offices every day. It knows that the prevalence of the mobile employee is on the rise and that the death of the desk phone slowly approaches. It gained proof of those assertions in its latest research, “2016 Report on Business Communications in the Era of the Anywhere Worker.”

The “anywhere worker” is the employee that is free to complete tasks from the comfort of the desk at home or in the office. This rising new style of company asset can complete many complex tasks and report to his team members, who may also be mobile, through online portals such as the cloud-based communications platform that Dialpad provides. This latest research of 1,014 employees and executives in various industries shows that 84 percent of companies already have “anywhere workers.” Furthermore, it reveals that 65 percent of employees work in a “desk phone optional” workplace and that a third of all surveyed employees said their desk phones would disappear within, at most, three years.

Morgan Norman, the vice president of global marketing at Dialpad, even went so far to call desk phones “cumbersome” and “mostly useless,” favoring instead the rise of mobile devices such as smartphones “that enable you to communicate effectively from any device.”

He further noted that the most important part of these universal dialpads is their ability to be flexible. The desk phone sits in a single place and often only takes voice calls, but the mobile phone can work from nearly anywhere and can support voice, video, text messages and even screen sharing through interfaces with other phones and desktop or mobile computers. They trump the desk phone at every turn.

A flocking to mobile phones is represented in Dialpad’s research. The paper further shows that, of all sizes of businesses represented, an average of 42 percent have a workforce that is at least 50 percent remote. These businesses also noted in their survey responses that 67 percent of employees are allowed to work from home. This is a sign of where the newest mobile devices allow companies to be: anywhere and potentially everywhere at once.

The numbers in Dialpad’s paper also suggest that companies will continue to push for mobility as the coming years progress. 83 percent of respondents said they would increase their reliance on remote workers within the next three to five years. This accompanies data about the desk phone, which shows that, although 66 percent of companies still provide desk phones for their employees, 59 percent believe they are outdated and 26 percent believe that the desk phone will be “non-existent” in three to five years.

As occasional use of the desk phone becomes the norm while mobile phone use takes over, it is clear which device is more destined to meet the dumpster. Dialpad insists that it has confirmed the death of the desk phone. Still, its research, while compelling, leaves room for the watchful eye of businesses everywhere that, although they are in the minority, rely on their desk phones for everyday tasks. These small and large businesses could not live without their connections to customers and fellow employees, and it would only be another challenge atop the stressful day of tasks to add another transition to the workplace. That said, outside pressure from communications service providers will likely reflect the changing tide as it brings in more systems that meet mobile phones and fewer that attract desk phones, a pressure that could itself snuff out the desk phone whether die-hards like it or not.