Keep Productivity High with Tech Tools for Remote Workers During the COVID-19 Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic may fundamentally change the way we do business in the future. Does your company have the tools and resources in place to boost productivity for remote staff?
IT professionals find themselves in an unprecedented situation, faced with millions of workers that suddenly need to transition from working within the confines of a “walled garden” of security to working from home with questionable security, a lack of clarity into processes and procedures and very little support from overtaxed internal IT staff. While this could easily be a recipe for disaster, companies are making it work by quickly churning through the critical requirements for remote work: secure access to company databases and cloud-based applications, telecommunications systems that re-route calls to remote office spaces and data-sharing solutions that allow teams to continue their collaboration.
Creating a Collaborative Environment for Employees
While many business professionals complain about forced networking and meetings, 95% of these same individuals overwhelmingly prefer face-to-face communications when asked outright. Only a little over a decade ago, video conferencing wasn’t an option for large portions of the world. Still, today’s solutions are increasingly easy to use and provide a consistent and positive experience. Fortunately, there are several solutions to provide real-time, visual communication in a world driven by social distancing, such as Microsoft Teams. This tool is a part of the Microsoft Office 365 suite. It includes live chat, video and audio conferencing solutions that are fully integrated into the Microsoft Office 365 productivity apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
IT Support for Long-Term Remote Work
Your IT staff is likely used to providing short-term solutions for individuals who need to work from home on a limited basis, but the current scale of the remote work is staggering. This can cause significant stress on already-overworked technical professionals, individuals that are struggling to complete their existing projects while taking peeks at what is coming for the future. Without access to the right resources, your IT staff is likely to overlook some time-sensitive requirements due to no fault of their own — there simply are not enough hours in the day to answer questions from employees, complete patches and upgrades, provision new hardware, align software licenses . . . everything that is required for a thriving business. Providing long-term support for remote workers looks dramatically different than a short-term solution, as you’ll need additional layers of security and other solutions in place to protect your organization against the growing risk of cyberattack.
Here are a few considerations as you’re prepping your company for long-term remote work:
- Which employees have positions which allow for remote work?
- Are these individuals fully versed in the recommended procedures, or will they need training?
- Do these staff members have the right resources, database access and software licensing available for remote activities?
- Are you relying on employees to provide devices, or will your IT team need to provision and deploy new laptops or mobile devices?
- Can your network handle the additional load placed by a significant number of remote staff members?
- Have you checked the firewall software licensing and access levels, anti-malware and antivirus software to ensure it will handle the added strain?
- Are there specific platforms or datasets that shouldn’t be accessed by employees who are utilizing their equipment?
Keeping these tasks and considerations in mind will help ensure that you can successfully and securely provide your staff with remote work capabilities.
Getting the right support for your technical professionals starts with identifying the needs within your organization. The team at DeVeera can come alongside your internal IT team, helping to find areas to slot in additional support or reduce pressure on IT professionals. Contact the technical experts at DeVeera at 831-200-1434 or via email to info@deveera.com to schedule your complimentary initial consultation. We work with organizations of all sizes throughout Monterey, CA and the surrounding areas to provide secure, reliable IT and communications infrastructures.
