There’s no escaping it – we are living and working in a new reality. Remote working, once viewed as a ‘nice to have’, has become essential to a huge number of organisations’ ongoing viability. Conversations with friends and family may well bring up tales of dusted-off laptops, desktop PCs being taken home on the train, and any number of home working horrors. Many organisations already have a robust remote working platform in place, and are therefore geared for ‘business as usual’ in terms of continued productivity, staff satisfaction, and customer brilliance. Some organisations, however, may have been slower off the mark, with mission-critical remote working (or lack thereof) very possibly keeping them up at night.
The good news is that all is not lost. Here’s five steps that will help get you on the front foot in maximising your organisation’s workspace agility to ensure you continue to operate successfully, come what may.
1. Lay Technology Foundations
It sounds obvious, but before you can implement an effective remote working policy it’s important to lay the appropriate technology foundations. It’s understandable that you may be looking to move quickly, but it’s essential to consider not just cost and functionality, but also security at all times. At a best practice minimum, set up a management zone for remote access to internal systems; ensure that up-to-date VPN technology is being used; always use multi-factor authentication for remote access; and ensure users are working from approved devices.
2. Ensure Users Can Collaborate
Transitioning to a remote working model shouldn’t mean losing the ability to communicate and collaborate seamlessly. In fact, collaboration can be enhanced by the many communication methods available within the modern agile workspace. Depending on the immediate requirements of the users within your organisation, the latest unified communications technology allows them to both communicate and collaborate, and concentrate on working through in-depth tasks. An added benefit to implementing unified communications and collaboration technology is the ability to share updates from the leadership team to users – especially important during these uncertain times.
3. Establish a Remote Working Culture
Working from home may well be a big change for a number of users in your organisation, so it’s important to put processes in place to establish the remote working culture as soon as possible, which will help to make that transition easier. Set out clear expectations for users when they work from home. Just like in the office, users will need time to focus on tasks throughout the day. Just because you don’t see a green tick beside their name doesn’t mean they’re not working. Communicate, be flexible, and be understanding.
4. Continually Review and Improve
As with all aspects of running an organisation, it’s not as simple as implementing remote working capabilities and assuming they’ll remain fit for purpose throughout the weeks, months and years to come. Cyber security threats will develop; new unified communications software capabilities will come online; the current situation may go on longer than initially expected, meaning more business systems will need to become accessible from home; and – as with so many aspects of running an IT estate – your users’ expectations will be set by what they can access and achieve in their personal lives through smartphone and tablet devices. Take agile working to heart by continually reviewing and improving when and where needed.
5. Focus on Mental Wellbeing
This is a very unsettling time for a large number of people. The users in your organisation may be worrying about job uncertainty, the health of friends and loved ones, the inability to travel, or any number of mental burdens. A well-executed remote working policy should help alleviate these through offering them the ability to communicate through voice and especially video, share personal and team chats, and generally stay present in each other’s lives.
The way we work is evolving at an unprecedented rate, and never more so than over the first quarter of 2020. Supercharging your remote working capabilities positively impacts employee wellbeing whilst enabling you to meet the complex organisational challenges you face head-on. It’s never meant as much as it does right now – get it right, and unified communications could become your organisation’s secret weapon throughout these turbulent times.
Guest blog by Tom Cotton, Agile Workspace Technical Director, Six Degrees
Six Degrees is a leading secure cloud-led managed service provider that works as a collaborative technology partner to organisations making a digital transition.
