09 Jun
Is your business ready for the “Working From Home” model?
Many businesses aren’t sure if they’re ready for the Working From Home (WFH) model, but most know that they need to adopt it in order to thrive in the future. COVID-19 has massively disrupted almost every industry, forcing businesses and business owners to take swift action and make immense changes to their work structures in order to survive.
Thanks to the cloud, making the switch to remote working wasn’t too difficult to begin with, but most businesses rightly assumed that these changes would be temporary. The world has changed, and the workplace with it. What do you as a business have to be aware of when making the permanent switch to working from home?
1. SECURITY
Security has, and will continue to be, a principle concern to every business. Having the workforce at the office allowed IT staff to use centralised systems of control and security, making potential breaches more manageable. The workforce is now decentralised, making traditional security methods ineffective.
Workers being at home leaves them more vulnerable to breaches if not properly managed. Most cyber attacks are still being targeted over email. During the pandemic, industries have seen a significant increase in Phishing and Spear Phishing attempts and attacks. Educating your workforce on the dangers and identifying features of email and phone attacks will be the most effective method to protect them. Feel free to use the below infographic to help inform and prepare your end users.
How to Recognize and Avoid Phishing Attacks Infographic
2. COMMUNICATION
Many businesses hadn’t thought of the challenges of keeping in touch with workforce and customers. A fair number of businesses still use office numbers on legacy telephone systems. These old systems make it difficult, sometimes impossible, to continue normal interaction with customers. If your customers cannot contact you, how can you continue your relationship with them?
A temporary solution involves forwarding your number to an available phone, but you cannot function like this forever and this can be expensive. Find a partner that will be able to quickly move your business communications to cloud VoIP. Your business will continue to have the benefits of a traditional PABX telephone system, while allowing your workforce to use the system anywhere in the world. Calls are also generally cheaper and of higher quality. See the below link for some more information on this.
3. COLLABORATION
Members of the workforce rarely do anything alone. Escalation processes, projects, sales, reporting, etc. make teamwork a necessary function of any successful business. Tools such as Google Drive and Dropbox have made teamwork and collaboration accessible to anyone, but are they enough?
More mature business tools do exist that will assist your teams work on documents, communicate, share and collaborate while keeping all these resources private and secure. Some of these tools even allow you to safely interact with people outside of your organisation. We always advise finding a partner to help implement these tools. IT Partners or MSP’s will help your business workforce properly utilise these tools to get the most out of them. One of these powerful tools is Microsoft Teams. Watch our free “MS Teams Basics” webinar and read more here.
4. SUPPORT
When the workforce was at the office, it made it easy for them to call for help when they experienced issues. IT staff on hand for any immediate issues allowed them to be solved quickly and let workforce members get back to work. While at home, your IT staff are not in the next room to help anymore.
Businesses need to find ways to allow IT staff to execute support services to others remotely, while making sure they can still account for any work they are doing. Investing in remote support solutions will streamline support and minimise your workforce downtime. Finding a suitable partner or MSP will assist your workforce stay online and supported at all times. Most MSP’s will be able to provide support and tools to your current internal IT staff, or completely manage all IT aspects of your business for you, completely externalising your IT systems to accountable experts. See the link below to learn how RMM can help your business.
These points will help guide you in the right direction when planning to have the workforce function effectively while working from home. Simpl has a team of specialists that can help you with every aspect when preparing remote work. Let us help make your business better. See the below link for more information.
Do you have any tips of your on on working from home? Leave your comments below, they may be helpful to others.
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