Does your team have the technology to work effectively from home?
EBC Group
Due to COVID-19 many organisations have employees working from home at the moment but do they have the technology in place to work as effectively remotely as they would in the office?
For a lot of organisations this may be the first time that they have really had to test whether they have the capacity for their teams to work from home and many are finding their technology is not as resilient as they had expected.
This can be as simple as not having enough laptop and mobile devices available and having to rely on unsecure home devices to not having the sort of collaboration tools which make communicating and sharing work easy to achieve.
An ideal situation would see your home workers being able to operate exactly as they would within the office, with seamlessly access to documents and data and the ability to easily share work with other team members and customers. Whilst being easily accessible to customers via your phone system or video conferencing.
Below are a number of solutions that should be considered vital to include within a successful remote working strategy. Cloud: Remote workers love the cloud because it provides a simple and secure experience where they can sign in from anywhere on any device.
Cloud computing increases security and gives users access to a remote virtual work environment so they can access all the same systems, applications and data, that they could when they are in the office.
Cost-effective: You don't need to spend money on equipment or infrastructure needs and relieves the burden on your IT staff. Scalable: You can add or remove services as needed.
Convenient: Remote employees have easy access and the cloud makes to access and share work. Secure: The most secure way for workers to access data.
Business Tools: Once you're up and running on the cloud, you can further improve collaboration with cloud-based business tools and software, such as those related to project management and communication. These give your remote employees the same level of access your in-house staff enjoys. Information Management software enables users to easily edit and share documents with other team members and customers.
Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams is the perfect tool for home workers that enables them to simply communicate, collaborate and share with other members of their teams wherever they are located. Features include Chat, File Sharing, Team Conversations and Team meetings via both audio and video. Microsoft Teams integrates with Office 365 and is also included within the free license. Microsoft Teams has an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that it simple to use and ensures uptake. Combined with familiar apps like Word, Outlook and Excel, menas your team members can be up and running straight away.
Unified Communications: Remote employees often work from different places and heavily rely on their mobile devices and laptops. By making mobile a key part of your workflow strategy, you offer more flexibility and create better efficiency. Unified Communication brings together your email, text and voice seamlessly with live voice, audio, video conferencing, and web collaboration, in one easy to use interface. This makes it simple to integrate different interconnected communication channels into one simple channel. You can seamlessly integrate your smartphone into the company communications system. Simply install an App on your mobile device, and your mobile phone instantly becomes a full-value extension of your phone system.
Easily accessible even when out of the office: With a mobile app as part of your telephony your remote workers can be reached under one single phone number. This means they can be reached at one single business number, no matter whether they are using a mobile device or a fixed phone and wherever they are working from. When using the app to make outgoing calls, your office number is displayed so callers are unaware where the call is being made from.
Video Conferencing: Phone conferencing solutions are old news. Today, when it comes to having meetings with remote employees and customers, you need video. Since these employees often cannot attend in-person meetings, video-conferencing has become one of the most helpful technologies for both in-house and remote employees.
Documents and Printing: In some industries where physical documents are required having access to cloud-ready mobile printers that allow users to download, share, print, scan, distribute and even translate documents on the go from anywhere, via laptop, tablet or smart phone is essential.
Security: Cyber Security has been at the top of the agenda for many organisations and home working should not comprise this. As mentioned above cloud provides the ideal solution for secure access. Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) provides an extra layer of security to make ensure that those trying to gain access to an online account are who they say they are. With 2FA, a user will enter their username and a password. Then, instead of immediately gaining access, they will be required to provide another piece of information. Clearly there are a lot of things for organisations to think about when setting a remote working strategy and in an ideal world it should be implemented and tested prior to requiring it.
EBC Group have created bespoke solutions for our clients that enable their teams to work effectively and at maximum productivity. We have also been working closely with others since the outbreak of Coronavirus to create secure and efficient home work environments. If you would like to find out more about the range of remote working solutions that EBC Group can assist you with visit www.ebcgroup.co.uk or phone 0121 585 4400.