Not Sure How To Develop Remote Working Capabilities For Your Business?
Just because your staff is stuck at home, doesn’t mean your business has to be put on hold. With the right IT and best practices in place, you can keep your staff working and productive.
Since the close of 2019, coronavirus has been spreading around the world. The situation developed into a real crisis in March, with the spread of the virus continuing to the point that the US government and health agencies begun urging citizens to practice social distancing to prevent further spread. Social distancing plays a vital role in slowing the spread of the virus, given how easily it’s transferred from one person to another.
However, while social distancing is important for the community, national, and global health, it puts business owners in an awkward position. How can they expect to keep their business running if their employees are stuck at home?
Your Checklist For Launching Remote Work Capabilities
With the right IT solutions and best practices in place, you can keep your staff productive no matter where they are.
The modern business technology industry offers a range of tools that are designed to provide convenient access to data, empower users to collaborate across vast distances, and maintain effective lines of communication.
Make sure you have an answer for each of the following questions:
- Do You Know Which Roles Can Continue Remotely? Most jobs can be done from home, but you should take a moment to consider what jobs specifically can be managed while outside of the office and write them down.
- Does Your Staff Have The Right Technology At Home? Your staff will need the right devices at their homes to continue working like they usually would in the office. In this day and age, you could assume that your employees all have laptops or desktops at home, but that may not be the case. You’d be surprised how many people rely on a smartphone or tablet for all their personal computing needs.
- Can Your Staff Connect To Business Data And Apps? As you can’t realistically lay cable to connect your employees’ homes to your office servers, they will need a viable Internet connection to access business data and applications.This only becomes an issue if your staff members are located in rural or remote areas that still lack a reliable Internet option. If that’s the case, then you’re urged to consider investing in mobile hotspots, or reimburse staff for the increased cost of relying on their personal cellular data connection.
- Do You Have The Right Licenses? Do you have the necessary number of licenses for all of your staff members to work remotely? Some cloud platforms and applications will have a limit, which may not have mattered in the office, but could slow your business down in a fully-remote model.
- Do You Have Enough Storage Space? Do you have enough cloud storage and email storage space for your entire staff? They won’t be able to save files locally to their work computers anymore, which means your storage needs will go up.
- Have You Set The Correct Access Rights? Are there any files that should not be accessed by staff remotely? If you operate in a regulated industry like healthcare or finance, you may want to section off specific sensitive data.
- Can You Hold Video Meetings? You’ll want to invest in a way for your staff to meet, both together, and with clients. While an audio-only conference call can suffice, many prefer to use video meeting software like Microsoft Teams. This allows for a more personal and connected experience in meetings.
- Do You Have Cloud-Based Phones? If your business did a lot of communicating over the phone at the office, you’d likely want to maintain that standard as you switch to a work-from-home model.You should look into cloud-hosted phone systems, which can maintain your business numbers and lines, and route incoming and outgoing calls through the cloud to your staff’s devices at home.
- Do You Have Reliable IT Support? In a remote work environment, IT support is more critical than ever. If you have a tech problem at the office, there’s still likely something your staff can do to stay productive without access to data. But if they’re at home, they’ll be entirely dependent on the reliability of their IT. That’s why you need IT support you can count on.
If you’re not sure how to answer these questions, don’t panic. You’re not on your own – the Corptek team is available to assist businesses like yours in planning and launching remote work capabilities.
Like this article? Check out the following blogs to learn more:
Microsoft Teams Helps Fort Worth Businesses Deal With Coronavirus
Technology Aids Reducing COVID-19 Spread
