Where Do We Go From Here: A Plan to Make Remote & Office Workers Successful

Many organizations had never thought about supplying laptops for home use or enabling remote work before the pandemic hit last year. They lived in an office-only work culture.  

So when employees were sent home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations found themselves unprepared. They didn’t have technology in place for people trying to connect to applications and do their work.  

Many organizations scrambled. We saw productivity losses, and security concerns. 

Since then, we’ve worked with many organizations to come up with options to keep employees productive whether working from home or in the office.

This is hard work. Many organizations were forced to rip off the Band-Aid of work culture changes. In some ways, this can be an easy way to force change. (How many organizations now thrive on video conferencing applications, where their use was irregular a year ago?) In other ways, this can set organizations up for confusion, incompatible systems and faulty collaboration. 

The sudden switch to work from home left organizations with many things to figure out in a snap: How to make personal cell phones work for business purposes. How to setup a classroom. How to connect to applications that weren't enabled for remote use. How to access data and files. How to have people sign or submit forms. How to shift so workers can continue to connect and collaborate with each other and clients in new ways. 

We’ve been busy shifting gears, to say the least. 

Shifting office technology culture is difficult. To do this effectively, an organization must: 

• Make decisions with business goals in mind
• Put the right technology in place 
• Convince and educate people/users 
• Lead by example 

Now that we’ve adjusted to a work-from-home model, we have time to think of long-term plans. People can get creative with problem solving when they’re forced to act quickly. That’s how businesses end up with seven instant messaging platforms and five video conferencing platforms. This is not conducive to productivity.   

If you need help building a remote work model with long-term staying power, an IT Consultant can help in the following ways: 

Perform a needs assessment to help understand demands and challenges 

A needs assessment involves talking to department managers and key stakeholders to understand immediate needs. Through examples, we assess what people in your organization need help with, and how to enable employees to work remotely or in the office for the long term. We’ll help you identify good work processes for remote workers and those in the office to work together. 

Identify solutions that work in the short and long term  

The short-term solutions many organizations put in place present challenges in administration and security and often lack integration to the rest of an organization's technology ecosystem. An IT consultant will help to prevent employees from going off and finding their own solutions. We work with key stakeholders to identify what can be put in place to streamline current processes, keep your systems secure and get buy in from the people who need to use the systems. We’ll help you find solutions that meet your needs immediately instead of dragging out the process of requirements gathering.  

Provide extra resources to help with coordination and accountability for internal and external resources to keep projects moving 

Sometimes people are so busy running around trying to put out fires that they need someone to coordinate projects or go out and ask questions. An IT consultant can provide much needed extra bandwidth. 

We’ve reached the point now where some workers will continue to work remotely, while others return to the office. Now we need to look forward, streamline, make good technology and business decisions for all types of workers, and prepare for the months and years ahead.  

 LEARN MORE ABOUT EASY & SECURE WFH SOLUTIONS

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