Work from home is here to stay, with more companies than ever before now offering flexible working opportunities to their staff. Around 95% of employees say their productivity is higher when working from home, and about 94% of employers feel the same way.
Though the pandemic might have facilitated the rapid shift to anywhere work, most experts agree the opportunities will only continue to grow in the years ahead. Of course, for companies to truly leverage the best results from remote working employees, they need to ensure they have access to the right tools to empower the workforce.
The question for today’s businesses isn’t whether they need to consider a work from home strategy but what kind of technology they need to make their initiative successful. Here are some quick tips if you’re comparing work-from-home technology in 2022.
Step 1: Consider Anywhere Work Opportunities
The first step in choosing the correct work from home technology is figuring out what kind of flexible working opportunities you will be offering your workforce. Different working strategies will require specific types of technology. For instance, if you’re allowing people to work from home full-time, you’ll need to invest in things like:
- Collaboration tools: Solutions like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex allow workforces to share files, interact, and chat in real-time, regardless of where they are.
- Cloud communication services: UCaaS and CCaaS for internal communications and contact centre interactions are essential for work-anywhere employees.
- Hardware: Cameras, all-in-one personal video bars and headphones with noise cancellation features could be essential for your team members.
Think about the kind of people who will be working remotely in your workforce and whether they’ll need to interact with in-office employees, leading to a demand for hybrid work solutions. If your contact centre agents and knowledge workers are both working remotely, will it be helpful to invest in a combined UCaaS and CCaaS environment?
Step 2: Consider Existing Investments
If you’re starting from scratch with your remote working strategy, you might be able to give your employees more freedom with the kind of hardware or software you use. If like many companies, you’re migrating into a remote landscape with some existing tools, you’ll need to keep those current investments in mind when choosing what to leverage next.
For instance, if you already have a substantial investment in the Microsoft ecosystem and most of your employees are comfortable using Microsoft tools, investing in a solution like Microsoft Teams makes sense. The open environment will allow you to bring your telephony carrier into the mix and ensure users get a more familiar software experience.
If you have existing investments in many speakerphones, cameras, and other hardware tools you want your employees to use when at home, you may need to look into the software options that work best with your chosen devices. Considering existing investments will help you keep your new remote work strategy from breaking your budget.
Step 3: Prioritise Security and Reliability
Remote work and anywhere working strategies have many benefits, but they also come with unique challenges for business leaders to consider, particularly around security and performance. When investing in work-from-home technology, start by looking at your networking foundations. Do you have SD-WAN or SASE solutions available so you can deliver access to crucial applications to your remote workers quickly?
When choosing vendors for software in the cloud, what can you do to improve your chances of resiliency, redundancy, and reliability? Looking at vendors offering exceptional flexibility, uptime, and scalability will often be crucial for many business leaders.
You’ll also need to think about security and encryption levels from each provider and how much control you’re going to have over work-from-home employee tools. Can you manage access controls and update functionality for your teams from a distance? Is it easy to provision new devices and remove access to technology wherever your staff members are?
Step 4: Consider User Experience and Customisation
Excellent employee experiences are the key to building a successful company in today’s competitive landscape. The happier your employees are, the more productive they are. Satisfied staff members stay with your business for long and deliver better customer experiences.
With this in mind, make sure you consider the needs and experiences of your team members carefully when choosing work from home tools. Ensure all suitable applications can successfully integrate to provide your teams with a single pane of glass environment for more productive work. You can even consider talking to your team members about the tools and hardware they want to use.
It’s also worth thinking about the customisation and personalisation options you can give your business users. Providing your team members with more choices on the meeting software they use, specific pieces of hardware and more can lead to better engagement.
Step 5: Build a Foundation for Innovation
Finally, when comparing solutions for work from home technology, remember that the answers you need now and the technology you need in the future may be two very different things. Investing in open environments for your software and agnostic hardware tools ensures your remote team members can continue to take advantage of innovations in the years to come.
While you might not want to invest in things like XR right now, there are plenty of opportunities to expand collaboration and update your business operations in the years to come with these solutions. The right remote work and hybrid working opportunities should give your team the freedom to innovate whenever they choose.
Focus on finding scalable technology capable of serving the essential needs of your business both now and in the future. This could mean starting with a focus on video conferencing and instant chat and eventually evolving to AI, IoT, and other pioneering technologies in the future.
