The COVID-19 outbreak has forced organisations to re-think their approach towards mobile and remote working overnight. In the past, organisations have used remote working as a perk to attract and retain talent. However, the pandemic’s onset changed remote working from optional to essential, creating new habits amongst teams and individuals.
With lock-down lifting in most countries, we are now at a crossroads and CIOs must decide whether the five-month remote-working experiment is worth incorporating into the company’s long-term strategy. In this article, I’ll take a fresh new look into the two most significant remote working elements, namely people and technology, and discuss how enterprises can ensure their employees are safe and productive while working remotely.
People adapt quickly during times of uncertainty
The topics of remote work and digital transformation have been around for over a decade. Yet, they haven’t been widely adopted worldwide. This was mostly due to issues of trust and productivity, especially amongst larger and more traditional organisations. COVID-19 erased these issues in a matter of days. Forced to maintain business operations, organisations quickly deployed additional remote accessing capacity, sometimes deploying additional hardware and remote client applications to employees working from home. Individuals and teams quickly adapted – sometimes organically, sometimes with foresight – to new frameworks of work that suited their culture and personal circumstances. As we move forward, CIOs must capitalise on employees’ receptive mood to embed successful working practices learned during the lockdown into the core of the organisation.
Technology is an enabler, but it must be safe
In the race to digitalise the workforce, cybersecurity was one of the first casualties. Lack of awareness about cybersecurity practices combined with a need for information about the COVID-19 virus created a golden opportunity for hackers and scammers to strike. In addition to that, there was a sudden proliferation of unprotected mobile devices such as tablets, smartphones and, WiFi hotspots accessing corporate resources and web applications without any controls and lacking security.
Now more than ever, it is crucial for businesses to review and update their online usage policies. To reduce the risk exposure of suffering a data breach, organisations should also provide training on cybersecurity best practices so that employees are always alert of possible phishing or malware attacks. If they haven’t done so already, they should also implement online security policies on all their mobile devices.
Data security needs to come to the fore
Enterprises moved applications and collaboration tools outside the perimeter of the corporate firewall and the enterprise branch network to make them accessible to employees at home during the quarantine. However, as the working conditions stabilise and a new hybrid model of work emerges, allowing employees to bring the office anywhere, effectively creating what is becoming known as a branch of one, it is imperative to adopt a secure by design approach. With more employees accessing confidential data from their mobile devices, companies must ensure that data is secure both on the device and in transit.
From now on, CIOs and IT managers should ask two basic questions every time they plan to roll out a new initiative to facilitate remote working:
- Can I see how employees are using data as a result of this initiative?
- Can I control how users access data through their mobile devices as a result of this initiative?
If the answer is no in either case, they should consider whether there’s a better way of achieving the business objective while minimising the data breach’s exposure.
The boundaries of personal and professional lives have become blurred
COVID-19 has blurred our professional and personal lives into one. When offices and schools are open, we have an ecosystem around us that takes care of the basics. We can go out and buy coffee, and lunch. Kids are in school, where they’re busy and safe for most of the day. However, when people are confined to their homes, the dynamic shifts. In this micro-ecosystem, people have to find the time to work, cook, do housework, feed the kids, home-school and check homework. This will happen at different times during the traditional working hours which means that work will spread out throughout the day with periods of inactivity when life happens. It is important that workers and businesses understand this new dynamic and establish a routine that flows around it without it becoming the much-feared “available 24/7”.
The future is now
We are now envisioning what the future of work will be post COVID-19. We’re at the point where we can collect data and insights about what worked and what didn’t during the last five months of remote working. Armed with this information, enterprises can radically change how they work for the collective benefit of employees and the business. Those leaders that can maximise the outcome of this opportunity are better equipped to recover quicker and thrive in the future.
Guest Blog by Octavio Hernandez, Product Marketing Manager, Asavie
Since 2004, Asavie has grown to become an industry leader in the delivery of private network slices that power secure mobile access for enterprises in this multi-cloud, multi-service and multi-network world.
