Managing Remote Workers During The Coronavirus Pandemic
The World Health Organization has officially declared coronavirus a worldwide pandemic. As countries begin to take drastic action to limit the spread of the virus, and citizens stock up on essentials for quarantine, businesses have been implementing precautionary measures as well.
Google has recommended that all US-based personnel that can work from home should do so. This comes in the wake of Amazon, Google and Facebook sending all their Seattle-based employees home as well.
“Social distancing” will be a key measure in preventing the spread of coronavirus. Canceling large gatherings, and limiting your staff’s exposure at the office will be more and more important as time goes on.
Do you have the right technologies and practices in place to let your staff work from home for weeks at a time?
Coronavirus Increases Use Of Collaboration And Communication Apps
Since the coronavirus outbreak began, many tech companies have seen a stark increase in the use of their applications that allow for remote communication and collaboration:
- Cisco has reported 22x the regular usage of their Webex service in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea
- Microsoft Teams use has gone up 500% in China
- In response to increased user activity, Zoom has dropped its standard 40-minute time limit on free meetings.
As these services become more critical and reach greater demand, you have to determine what solutions you have in place to support remote workers.
What Remote Working Best Practices Should You Follow?
Effective remote working comes down to the implementation of a comprehensive strategy for cloud services delivery. Remote workers need to be able to do their work, and easily.
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 services provider 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 the entire business.
There are a number of consumer and business-class solutions available to users depending on the size of the organization:
- Microsoft Sharepoint, OneDrive & Teams
- Ignite
- Skype
- VPN software to keep connections secure
You could handle 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 BC Networks to help.
We know that you’d like to keep your business operating no matter what crisis the nation faces. If remote work capabilities can keep your staff productive and healthy, then you should start planning for it now.
Like this article? Check out the following blogs to learn more:
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