A lot of companies are now deciding that they will keep some element of remote working for the foreseeable future, and if you’re in the same position then you can use the resources below to learn how to upgrade your IT to help. Whether it’s the whole company, or only certain people at certain times, it’s essential your home workers have the same seamless connection to your IT systems as they would do in the office, and you can make straight-forward changes to guarantee this and improve the remote working experience.

Long-term remote working – building IT for a new culture

When lockdown was announced many businesses had to make snap decisions about connectivity, devices and operating protocols. Now is the time to reflect on those decisions and see if improvements can be made to optimise remote working conditions.

Bandwidth

Insufficient bandwidth is a real drain on an organisation. It frustrates workers, stalls productivity and can cost you business. If this continues to be a problem months after your employees began working from home, it needs addressing now.

Since you’re likely having Big Conversations about the place of the office in a post-COVID world, this could also be a good time to consider whether it makes sense to keep your IT infrastructure in a virtually empty office that has insufficient bandwidth. Colocation offers better connectivity, greater security and 24/7 support, all of which continued undisrupted during lockdown.

VPN

Many businesses are relying on a VPN to enable remote workers to access office-based servers. If the connection is horribly slow, it could be a bandwidth issue or it might be simply that the VPN is congested and you need to upgrade user capacity. Incidentally, if you were already using a VPN before lockdown, the licence most likely didn’t cover everyone in the company – if you haven’t already looked at your COVID-adjusted capacity requirements, now is the time.

Devices

Ageing hardware can be another reason for sluggish connections and should be factored in when troubleshooting connectivity issues. Is it time for an upgrade? It’s also worth checking which devices are in use. You may find some people are using both their personal computers and business-owned devices, raising questions about security.

If you are considering a hybrid office/remote system whereby people are in the office some days and working from home on other days, think about how this will work from a technology standpoint. If your employees use a desktop computer, for example, will they be expected to bring it in and out with them? Will you give them a second device for the home? Or switch to a laptop that is easier to transport?

Email

Email has long been the main form of communication with customers, but now it is also the main form of internal communication, along with messaging apps like Slack and Teams. Check in on your mail servers. How are they holding up with all this extra traffic? Carry out the necessary maintenance and any upgrades to ensure they are reliable, resilient and set up appropriately to reduce the impact of spam on people’s inboxes.

[READ THE FULL BLOG FOR ADVICE ON CYBER SECURITY AND REMOTE SOCIALISING]

For further support and consultation on these areas, please feel free to get in touch with team.