Permanent Remote Working? The New Normal

IT Decision-Making Tips To Support Permanent Remote Working

Many employees are ready to take permanent remote working as their new normal once this pandemic is over. Those who have been working from home (WFH) during the lockdown reported that they would adopt home-based working permanently. A smaller proportion of employees said they would not be happy if their employer made working from home the only options available to them. In spite of all the challenges that we have faced over the past few months, employees around the world found that working from home has improved their quality of life.

If WFH is here to stay forever, it is the right time for IT decision-makers to identify challenges and opportunities presented by these significant changes.

Remote Working Challenges

The biggest challenge today is to facilitate your employees to work, learn, and collaborate from home permanently. Our Heroes rally around our mission – ‘To improve IT systems, so you can focus on your core business objectives’. With many organisations currently working on implementing WFH capabilities for an extended period of time, here are our IT decision-making tips to support permanent remote working.

Support Your Employees Working From Home

Over the last few months, we have seen small and medium-sized businesses, education institutions, religious organisations, and larger global companies transitioning from operating in physical spaces to running everything virtually. From the local corner shop to the service industry, consumer goods, and tech companies. All businesses have had to work out a balance between keeping their consumers and employees safe while maintaining business as usual. For many companies, this has meant implementing new technology or updating systems to support work from home.

If you are reading this, it is likely that you know Helpdesk Heroes. Welcome to anyone new! We deliver IT support to small and medium-sized businesses and coordinate technology deployments in and around London.

Our Heroes are IT and security experts and work vigorously to safeguard your business or organisation from targeted attacks and theft or loss of data on your systems. We partner with trusted technology vendors such as Dell, Cisco, AMD, Apple, AWS, BT, Corsair, Google, HP, among others, to create, deliver and implement solutions to meet your business needs.

Shape A Resilient Digitally-Powered Version Of Your Organisation

When the Prime Minister announced a national lockdown, organisations moved fast to adapt to the changes that they were facing. Now that core operations are slowly returning to normal, businesses can establish plans to shape a digitally-powered version of their company. Process, structure, culture, and technology are essential components to take into consideration, to ensure all areas of your company will be enabled with the right technology.

Equipping your employees and ecosystems with digital tools to support integrated digital platforms will help people work, learn, and collaborate seamlessly.

Now is the right time to identify remaining gaps in your current systems. In particular,  leveraging productivity and security to respond to the current business climate.

Safeguard Data Created And Shared Remotely

Protecting your business data is a challenge, especially when your employees are working from home. Now that your employees create and share data outside of your corporate walls, it is more important than ever to protect it. Sensitive data movement could have seen a shift due to the change in employee’s behaviour patterns in addition to how they are using software applications outside of the workplace, for instance.

If you weren’t prepared for this, you might have had to rush into creating new types of remote access. Consider carefully and protect your data and the systems you have today, as it might not be optimal to safeguard your data remotely. On top of that, employees working remotely might have considered file-sharing via personal accounts for convenience in the hope of prioritising productivity. Unfortunately, this behaviour might have put productivity over security and weakened your business's cybersecurity.

Review your Data Backup and Recovery strategies

Unfortunately, no one is exempt from potential ransomware attacks or hardware failure. Accessing, sharing, and storing your data are vital components of your workflow.  It is important to ensure that every single staff device connecting to your company network is secure.

In the event that a ransomware attack is successful or a hardware failure happens, your business will be able to recover, thanks to a tight back-up and recovery strategy. Rethinking your backup and recovery strategies in this climate might feel like a challenge. Nevertheless, this is the perfect opportunity to improve your backup and disaster plans.

Above all, a well-planned back-up and recovery strategy is essential. Any data stored on devices or servers are vulnerable to hardware failure, environmental disaster, theft, or cyberattacks. HelpDesk Heroes online backup & disaster services ensure that your business data is secure against advanced threats, viruses, and malware.

In conclusion

Working from home has created new challenges for businesses and individuals alike. The future of working and the workplace is upon us. Overcoming security threats and productivity issues are key to a successful remote working team. It is a great time for companies to show their ability to make business and technology needs to work seamlessly.

Read more from our blog