Coronavirus is just the latest reason for the increase in remote working opportunities. According to NPR, in Seattle, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have sent employees home to work remotely. They are not the only affected area; tech giants Twitter and Square have also closed offices and sent employees home to work, and now schools across the country are shutting down for 2 weeks or more.

The sudden boost in remote working is entirely attributable to coronavirus; however, working from home was an initiative that has been steadily rising over the last few years. According to a Gallup poll completed in 2017, 43% of Americans work from home sometimes, an increase from 39% in 2012. This particular incident may initiate much more remote working opportunities and companies should be ready.

Telecommuting Is Good For Employers & Employees

“A recent survey of 2,000 working professionals and 1,000 hiring managers by LinkedIn found that 82% of workers want to work from home at least one day per week, and 57% want to work from home at least three days per week.” (CNBC)

Working remotely has benefits for employees and employers, from cost savings to increased productivity, but the initiation period can be tricky. Tech One IT has worked with many clients to ensure that their IT systems can manage remote logins, and that processes are in place for accessing files and sharing information in real-time. Put simply, Tech One IT has made the work-from-home process seamless and helped many companies to boost employee morale and productivity while reducing overhead.

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How To Implement A Remote Working Initiative

Understand The Cultural Paradigm Shift

When employees are given the opportunity to work from home, it has been our experience that many of those sent home to work are not clear on the company’s overall goals. This can lead to an increase in task management, and a lack of opportunities for offering fresh ideas that could boost the company’s long-term strategy.

It is imperative that all employees, regardless of work location, understand the company’s goals and feel that they are part of the company’s overall culture.

At Tech One IT, our organizational change management team is backed by a PhD-qualified agile coach and has helped multiple organizations throughout the Southwest U.S. to move quickly into the working environment that works best for them, while maintaining – and often strengthening – the company’s core values and mission.

Security

The biggest risk when mobilizing your remote workforce is ensuring complete security. Formal policies laying out the risks and the rules are imperative. This cannot be done without an experienced IT team. At Tech One IT, we have created these policies for clients and found that explaining the specific vulnerabilities to employees increases the adaptation of such policies.

Once implemented, our IT team recommends a minimum of annual updates to the remote work security policy in order to mitigate the newest risks and vulnerabilities.

VPN

By setting up VPNs and password managers, each of our clients has overcome risks that would otherwise be present due to public WiFi networks and frequently-used passwords. (According to LogMeIn.com, 59% of people polled admit to using the same password for everything.)

Company-issued laptops

When workers are sent home to work on personal devices, the issues are numerous. Prior to engaging with Tech One IT, our clients complained of inefficiency, or even work halting, due to missing software, outdated hardware, or a lack of disk space, but the biggest concern should again be security. Sensitive company information should not be shared across personal devices for which the company has no access and no ability to control the spread of such information.

Tech One IT has the capability and past performance to quickly set up company-issued devices so that employees can work remotely and securely with no slow down or excuses that could hinder workflow.

Tech One IT has been successfully implementing remote working for employees for employees and contractors for over a decade. To get started, please contact us immediately!

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