It’s a whole new world really. A whole new normal that everyone is forced to adapt to overnight. Gone are the days where colleagues can simply shout across the office or roll their chair to their colleagues’ cubicle to ask them a question. With everyone no longer working in the same office, and thus working remotely, confusion and unproductivity can result if employees do not have the right tools.
Managing your employees and IT while working remotely is therefore crucial to the success of your business. And as many employees are still working from home as the default, having Managed IT Support will be beneficial to help your company support a changing set of IT needs.
Here are several tips to ensuring a smooth office to remote work transition with Managed IT Support:
Selecting the right Home Office Equipment
Let’s face it. Not all employees are going to have the equipment they need at home to do everything required for their daily work functions. It is thus important to do an inventory of needed items with each one to determine any additional needs for their home office so they can work productively.
However, selecting the right IT tools for your needs can be quite tricky. You have to consider your operational workflow, IT infrastructure capabilities, industry-specific needs & your budget requirements. Some considerations for equipment that may be needed when an employee is working from home include:
Laptop or desktop
Headset with microphone
Web cam
Printer
Handset for a cloud telephony system
But each role is different, and each industry is different. So here’s the question you should ask. What equipment do your employees really need to work from home effectively? What seems reasonable enough when you only work from home on occasion?
Partnering with a Managed IT Provider will hence give you a better idea of exactly what equipment your employees need for your business; including how to manage technology purchases with your current budget.
Subscribing to the right Tools and Platforms
At the centre of a remote working workplace is a core set of tools that your employees need in order to collaborate and do their jobs. This choice of tools varies from industry to industry and company to company.
Having the right cloud solutions to support your team is vital to keeping your operating running smoothly from remote locations. The main things you want to consider are the tools used for:
Data access (storage platforms like Enterprise File Sync & Share solutions)
Team collaboration tools (Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, etc.)
Productivity applications (Microsoft Office 365, etc.)
But here’s the key: pick a core set of tools and ensure your teams know how to connect to and use them from home. This may require a VPN to connect, and if so, ensure your staff have this set up on their work computers.
Try to avoid multiple tools for the same purpose, and ensure that as many of these tools can be signed into with a single account from home. Avoid any tools that are tied to a specific office or location; our goal is cross-company collaboration, irrespective of if you are at HQ or at home.
And of course, if you’re not fully cloud transitioned, a Managed IT Provider can even help with data migration to effective cloud services and storage solutions.
This type of solution allows employees to access vitally-needed records and tools while keeping your business as secure as possible.
Securing your Remote Network
Employees that are working from home are going to have varying routers and router security. Some employees may even connect from a free public hotspot, leaving any data transmissions vulnerable to being intercepted.
Engaging in Managed IT Support can help provide the support needed to secure your company’s internal network against the possibility of an external attack.
Managed IT Providers can recommend and implement features like using a virtual private network (VPN) to encrypt employees’ internet connection or utilise multi-factor authentication to ensure that no one accesses your system without the proper credentials.
This will thus add a much-needed layer of security and prevent data from being compromised.
Securing your Remote Devices
Whether you have your employees using their work devices at home (recommended) or they’re using their own personal computers to work from home, those devices need to be secure.
With Managed IT Support, you can ensure a number of safeguards are taken that will help prevent breaches.
This includes:
Patch and update management
Managed antivirus/anti-malware
Monitoring for any threats
In addition, Managed IT Providers can set up end-user remote access so that employees can securely access workstations or servers from home.
Granular permissions and auditable logs ensure only people with correct permissions can access their assigned endpoints and that IT can verify who accessed which devices.
Ease of Getting Technical Support
If your employees are working in the office and run into an IT issue, they can just call the in-house IT company or engineer onsite. However, if your employees are at home and run into a computer issue, how are they going to get the help they need?
Productivity therefore can be impacted particularly harshly when IT issues arise for remote workers. In many cases, mitigation can be limited and delayed. Moreover, being able to identify issues before they interrupt employees is critical for keeping productivity high.
That’s where Managed IT Support comes in!
Signing up for Managed IT Support for your business will provide your employees with the help they need efficiently to get them quickly back on task with minimal downtime.
In addition, Managed IT Support gives you the reassurance that your employees will always be able to get the IT support they need. Look at it this way, if your company’s IT engineer falls sick one day, who is going to help your employees with their IT issues? On the other hand, with Managed IT Support, if one of our engineers fall sick, there is always another one who can help get the job done!
Want to find out more about Managed IT Support? Click the green button below to contact us today!
eVantage Technology is a professional and trusted IT solutions provider, dedicated to providing exceptional service to companies in Singapore and across Asia.