Remote work capabilities have become extremely important for businesses trying to stay productive during the coronavirus pandemic. Do you have the right technologies in place to keep your staff productive at home right now?
Throughout Nevada and across the country, business owners have sent their staff members home, prioritizing their employees’ health first and foremost during the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to maintain business continuity and employee productivity.
But it’s not impossible – with the right tools, you can keep your staff working remotely. However, it can be difficult to do so effectively. If you’ve already launched a remote work model, it could be made more efficient. If you haven’t switched to a remote work model yet, it’s not too late to start.
You just have to know how…
It’s Not Too Late To Switch To A Remote Work Model
There are a few steps you’ll need to take to improve or launch your remote work capabilities:
- The Foundation: Remote working capability is dependent on the implementation of a comprehensive strategy for cloud services delivery. Remote workers need to be able to do their work, and easily. Any obstacles in the user experience will prevent them from staying productive.
- Verify Capabilities: It doesn’t matter what technologies you have in place if your staff can’t use them. That’s why you need to confirm:
- Ease Of Use: If your staff is fighting against unintuitive software, a bad connection, or anything else tech-related, their standard workday won’t be all that productive. It won’t be long before your business’ productivity grinds to a halt.
- Reliable Connectivity: You need to poll your staff and find out who has a reliable Internet connection at home. If your staff lives in remote areas with poor connectivity, you may have to consider investing in cellular-data, or have a plan in place to deal with delays on their end.
- The Tools: There are a number of consumer and business-class solutions available to users depending on the size of the organization:
- ShareSync for file sharing
- VoIP for making and receiving calls
- Microsoft Teams for staff chat
- Zoom for telehealth & conferences
- Cloud desktops to access business apps via any device
- Best Practices: You can’t just have the right tools – you need to know how to use them too. Make sure you’re managing and supporting your staff properly.
- Can you monitor your employees’ phone traffic, allowing them to take calls from clients, and make calls on their business lines? You also need software that allows you to record calls in order to track the customers’ experience.
- Cybersecurity: Any crisis like this presents a key opportunity for cybercriminals to strike. Make sure you’re not compromising security in order to provide data access to your staff.
- Stay Up To Date: Did you know that one of the most common ways that cybercriminals get into a network is through loopholes in popular software? Much of the software you rely on to get work done every day could have flaws — or “exploits” — that leave you vulnerable to security breaches.
- Deploy A VPN: When you use a virtual private network (VPN), your data is encrypted, or hidden, as it moves from your device to the VPN and then continues onto the Internet. That makes it harder for an attacker to identify you as the source of the data – no matter whether you’re on your mobile device’s data connection, or using an unsecured retail Wi-Fi network while you’re in line for coffee.
No matter where you are in the process of setting up or supporting your staff for remote work, you don’t have to do it alone. Get in touch with Network Security Associates for expert assistance.
Looking for more articles like this one? Check out the following blogs to learn more:
A Message From Our CEO
Robert Davis
Is Your Current Technology Partner Helping You Prepare for Coronavirus?