Microsoft Hold 'Moofing' Awards
Tuesday 04 Nov 2008
The second People Moving Business Awards were held at Wembley Stadium last month. The awards
recognise those companies using mobile technology to enhance productivity, save money and help the
global carbon footprint.
Microsoft host the event in conjunction with sponsorship from HTC, Greenbang and Cognito in a bid to
encourage UK businesses and institutions to investigate ways of going mobile and rewarding those that
already have.
I couldn’t believe this when I read it on the Work Wise UK website – The average employee spends 29
days per year on travelling to work. That’s actually more than the average holiday allowance.
People are now starting to realise that this lost time could be used more productively by using
mobile solutions to work from home or elsewhere.
This is known as ‘mobile-out-of-office-working and believe it or not there is an industry term for it
– ‘moofing’. The idea behind ‘moofing’ is to decrease the need to waste time travelling to work by
using mobile technology to find ways to communicate with minimum disruption.
All of the businesses promoted at the awards have saved thousands of pounds thanks to implementing
moofing.
Head of Microsoft UK mobile communications business, James McCarthy said: “We need to encourage more
companies to use flexibility in the work space, because what we have found is only a small amount of
companies actively promote flexible working as part of their employee contract,”
“Far too few companies are seeing the real benefits, and trying real innovative things with the
technology, to try and find new ways of working.”