Managing Remote Workers During The Coronavirus Pandemic
As coronavirus continues to spread across the US, more and more companies are instructing employees to work from home. Do you have the right technology in place to do so?
The World Health Organization declared coronavirus a worldwide pandemic in March, 2020. As countries started to take drastic action to limit the spread of the virus, and citizens stocked up on essentials for quarantine, businesses have been implementing precautionary measures as well. In many cases, these measures were mandated with shelter-in-place and stay-at-home requirements imposed. So how do you continue operation when your employees aren’t able to come into the office?
It’s all about effective remote work tools, processes, and procedures.
“Social distancing” will be a key measure in preventing the spread of coronavirus. Any businesses deemed not essential are required to close their doors – forcing them to shut down temporarily or work from home. This is for the best as limiting your staff’s exposure at the office will keep them safe and healthy in the long-term. But it’s important to have the right tools, processes, and procedures to let your staff work from home until it’s safe to come back into the office.
What Remote Working Best Practices Should You Follow?
Effective remote working comes down to the implementation of a comprehensive strategy for cloud services delivery. Remote workers need to be able to do their work – securely and easily. If they are 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.
This is why it is important to work with an IT service provider that can assess your organization’s current capabilities, in order to allow your workers to access their business data, systems, and applications in a cost-effective, secure, and easy manner. The right cloud-based solutions will keep you prepared to respond to any sort of disruption – now and into the future:
- A cloud-based VoIP system that enables your employees to access their work lines, along with all extensions and call routing/transfering capabilities, from the comfort of their own home using their desktop or smartphone via the softphone app.
- A cloud-based productivity suite like Microsoft Office 365 that gives anytime, anywhere access to important applications for word processing, spreadsheets, and more, as well as email, calendar, and contacts.
- A video conferencing solution like Microsoft Teams, available in any Microsoft Office 365 plan, that provides the ability to ensure face-to-face interaction via video conferences with multiple people.
- A virtual desktop infrastructure that provides the ability to maintain access to work computers, including all settings, applications, etc. from home – offering more protection against cybercrime.
With so many workers being given remote access to company resources, it’s important to secure those connections to protect the company network. VPNs are essential but can be a major security vulnerability if they’re not managed properly. Also, it’s imperative that VPN solutions use two-factor authentication to protect the company network.
Will Remote Work Become an Integral Part of Our Society Going Forward?
While coronavirus (COVID-19) is the current source of the demand for remote working capabilities, the pandemic highlights the need for remote work capabilities at all times. This isn’t the first disruption businesses have faced and it won’t be the last. In fact, there are many smaller, less widespread disruption that can leave an organization working from another location, such as:
- Bad weather events
- Exhausting rush hour travel times
- Necessary business travel
- And much more
All organizations going forward should incorporate remote work tools, processes, and procedures into their business contingency plans going forward. In the past, many organizations maintained business contingency plans focused on keeping data backed up and ready to recover. Now, those organizations are seeing the importance of planning for the worst – a pandemic that leaves them unable to come into the office for months on end.
TCA SynerTech is here to help. We know that you would like to keep your business operating, no matter what crisis the nation is facing. If remote work capabilities can keep your staff productive and healthy, then let’s implement them together.
