Can Your Staff Work Remotely?

Remote work capabilities can be extremely convenient for businesses with multiple locations, employees on the go, or that need their staff to work from home during a crisis. Do you have that capability in place?

The modern workplace has changed quickly over the past ten years.

It’s easy to still picture the ‘90s standard – cubicles, water cooler, etc. But that’s not reality anymore. You and your staff should be able to work when and where it’s more convenient for you.

Businesses are hiring more and more remote workers – in fact, it’s the way half the country works every day. So many staff members that work from home, outside of the business’ city of operation, and even much further away.

To some extent that probably includes you. And no wonder – the convenience of being able to take your work wherever you like is a fantastic benefit of current technology. That’s not to mention that during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the need for remote work capability is more important than ever.

Do you have the right technologies in place to keep your staff productive at home?

The Foundation Of Remote Work Capabilities

Remote working capability is dependent on the implementation of a comprehensive strategy for cloud services delivery. Remote workers need to be able to do their work, and easily. Any obstacles will prevent them from staying productive.

If they’re fighting against unintuitive software, a bad connection, or anything else tech-related, their standard workday won’t be all that productive. It won’t be long before your business’ productivity grinds to a halt. That’s why, so long as the remote worker has a strong Internet connection, the rest of the work is on the IT support team to deliver a responsive and user-friendly cloud platform with which the worker can access their business data.

With those two benchmarks in mind, there’s really only one way to achieve it: migrating all necessary work data to a reliable cloud platform. The more data that’s hosted in the cloud, the better it is for your business.

There are a number of consumer and business-class solutions available to users depending on the size of the organization:

Sharepoint
DropBox
OneDrive
Ignite

Top Tips To Optimize Your Remote Work Capabilities

Use A VPN: When you use a virtual private network (VPN), your data is encrypted, or hidden, as it moves from your device to the VPN and then continues onto the Internet. That makes it harder for an attacker to identify you as the source of the data – no matter whether you’re on your mobile device’s data connection, or using an unsecured retail Wi-Fi network while you’re in line for coffee.
Implement a Mobile Device Management Policy: An effective MDM policy should also instill safe and secure practices for employees that use personal devices for business purposes – and your IT company should help you develop one. Key considerations include:
- Decide When And How Mobile Devices Will Be Used.
  Integrated into your internal network, these devices can be used to access, store, transmit, and receive business data. You’ll need to have policies in place to regulate how employees use their devices to interact with sensitive data.
- Consider How Mobile Device Use Can Pose Risks To Your Data.
  A risk analysis will help you identify vulnerabilities in your security infrastructure, and help you determine the safeguards, policies, and procedures you’ll need to have in place.
Stay Safe While Mobile: Don’t download apps that aren’t approved by your smartphone provider’s app store. Unauthorized apps are a common way for hackers to sneak malware onto your device. Always be skeptical of permissions you grant and the data you provide when using mobile technology.
Stay Up To Date: Did you know that one of the most common ways that cybercriminals get into a network is through loopholes in popular software? Much of the software you rely on to get work done every day could have flaws — or “exploits” — that leave you vulnerable to security breaches.

To address this, developers regularly release software patches and updates to fix those flaws and protect users. This is why it’s imperative that you keep your applications and systems up to date.

You could handle all of this on your own – if you have the time and expertise, then it’s likely a project you could take care of. But if not, then you need to partner with an IT support provider that can deliver a responsive and reliable cloud solution for your staff – allow Sysoft Computer Consultants to help.

We know that you’d like to keep your business operating no matter what crisis the nation faces. If remote work capabilities will keep your business going while your staff is stuck at home, then you need to invest in them, sooner rather than later.

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