The Connection, Inc Blog

There is one question that workers don’t hear enough, and if they do hear it, it is usually said in passing as a rhetorical question. That question is:

“How are you doing?”

More than ever, it is important for your employees to have positive work experiences. People have many more resources to find new work today, and with so many people willing to find the “right fit” it can be quite expensive for organizations. While the best way is always to compensate people well, if you are facing a situation where you need to be creative to keep your people around, we have three suggestions. 

We all know the importance of IT maintenance and management when it comes to effectively running a business, but it’s really hard to ensure that your technology is being properly maintained when your staff have one foot out the door. A new survey from Gartner suggests that IT employees are more likely to leave your business than other non-IT employees, and this puts a heavier burden on you to make sure technology is properly taken care of.

Remote work carries with it a different set of risks than does a traditional workplace setup. Being forced to move in that direction only exacerbates the issue of figuring out how to operate under what people are calling the “new normal”. This month we thought we would go through a couple of the risks that come with having your staff working remotely, and what to do about them. 

For the past year or so, most workers around the world were forced to work remotely in order to adhere to the strict social distancing guidelines imposed by governing bodies. Now that the time has come to return to the office, many workers are finding that their expectations are a bit different than they were previously, forcing business owners to respond.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it no small amount of uncertainty, including amongst business owners who were looking at a very up-in-the-air future. With so many lacking the technology needed to support remote operations—never mind the fact that remote work was a new concept for so many—the learning curve was a considerable hurdle. However, with vaccines being administered and restrictions lifted, it now becomes critical to find a balance.

When you talk about your employees, you hopefully often refer to them as a department, or a “team.” These terms often come with predetermined assumptions, with one of them being that the employees work together to accomplish something specific. However, it’s often not so simple. If your employees aren’t working together as a team, how can you fix this dilemma?

BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, policies have proven to be a highly effective way for companies to save money. However, these policies need to address some of the shortcomings, potential costs and issues that comes with employees bringing and using their own devices could present to your business--not to mention security concerns.

Committing Time to Mobile Device Management
Mobile Device Management, or MDM, needs to be involved whenever there’s a BYOD implementation. There needs to be a designated contact in your organization to monitor your MDM software to ensure that your data isn’t being accessed by someone lacking the authorization to do so.

Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done. Monitoring your MDM solution can very quickly become a full-time task. Before you commit to a BYOD strategy, establish if you can spare the resources to properly maintain it.

Obtaining Support
If a company provides their workforce with devices, the company is in control of which devices they provide. The company can select a certain build of machine and standardize the company systems. This means that IT only has to know how to handle one or two types of machine, allowing them to do a better, faster job taking care of your systems.

BYOD can often make obtaining support more difficult and time-consuming, and thereby less cost-effective. This is because you suddenly have to contend with numerous kinds of devices and the various issues each can present. As a result, providing uniform company devices could ultimately total out to be less expensive than allowing employees to use their own, depending on the abilities of your employees.

Waste
We’ve all been there--we get something, determined to use it, and yet it is never used for its intended purpose. This phenomenon can be seen in many cases of BYOD implementation. An employee will be approved for BYOD--whether or not their duties would be benefitted by their using their own device in the first place--and never use it for work. As a result, their employer more or less begins to pay for the employee’s personal device.

Lack of Control
It wasn’t all too long ago that Apple released iOS 11, which came with a new ‘feature’ that could more accurately be called a vulnerability. The device’s control center provides a switch to turn Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on and off. However, it turns out that these switches don’t actually turn either off, opening a user to attack. Therefore, using a device with iOS 11 installed could leave your business vulnerable if it is part of a BYOD implementation.

Now, we aren’t saying that you shouldn’t utilize BYOD. We just want to make sure you are prepared to mitigate these concerns and get the most benefit out of your Bring Your Own Device policy. We can help make sure that you are prepared. Call The Connection, Inc today at (732) 291-5938.

Stress is a reality of everyday life, especially in the workplace. Of course, different people find different things to be stressful, as well. Here, we’ll review some of the biggest sources of stress to be found in an office environment, and what some of the effects of this stress can be.

The right technology can be a catalyst for change. While the right kind of change can be enough to drive innovation and push the limits of your business, the wrong kind of change--namely, employee turnover--can put a halt to productivity and force you to trace your steps back down the old, familiar path of onboarding and training. How can you use technology to retain top talent and reinforce the right message amongst your employees?

Today we’ll examine some of the biggest business technology innovations that can help your organization keep its talent happy and its culture healthy. These recommendations will take into account the physical workspace of your company and how technology will influence the user’s satisfaction.

Provide the Technology to Fit the Workspace
Depending on the business, you might have a space that is conducive to a more mobile type of working style. Give your employees the technology to take advantage of their workspace, whether it’s a desktop or laptop. While the traditional work desk is still quite common in the workplace, open offices are gaining traction, and open areas where employees can work when they need to get away from others to focus or hunker down on a task can be provided to ensure employees can work on their own terms while still maintaining productivity.

Make It Easy for Employees to Use their Devices
A Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy can be a great boon for your business. For one, it keeps your organization from investing in company devices when they aren’t needed. You can just have your employees use their own devices for work purposes as long as they adhere to your organization’s policy regarding data security. The ideal BYOD policy will respect your employees’ ability to work as needed while also maintaining the right to remotely wipe devices and apply permissions to whitelist or blacklist apps.

Properly Maintain Technology Systems
Nothing is more irritating for workers than technology that doesn’t work. Even a task like checking your email can be held up by a workstation that is too slow or not configured properly. To this end, preventative maintenance and management is critical, as you can make sure technology stays in proper working order before it becomes a major issue for your employees. If you can’t take proper care of your technology, employees will wonder why you can’t make their jobs a priority for your business, and it can reflect in their work performance.

The Connection, Inc can help you both implement and maintain technology in a way that is effective for retaining employees. To learn more about our remote monitoring and management solutions, as well as Bring Your Own Device policies, reach out to us at (732) 291-5938.

An engaged employee will be invested in the future of your company, as well as their own future that they can see within your business. Unfortunately, research showcases that the numbers don’t look so bright for employee engagement in the workplace. According to a 2015 poll from Gallup, only about 30% of employees find themselves engaged in the workplace, while about 50% say they aren’t engaged with their work, and 20% claim to be actively disengaged by their workplace.

One of the most dreaded situations in the modern office is the resignation of experienced talent. It’s always sad to say goodbye to a colleague and friend… under the right circumstances. What would happen if an angry employee left your company and used their privileges to wreck havoc on your IT?

One of the biggest challenges of running a business is attracting and retaining quality workers. To accomplish this, you’re going to need more than an old-fashioned “help wanted” ad. These days, you will need to offer what quality employees are looking for--a flexible workplace environment.

As a business owner, you walk a fine line between boss and friend. While you want to be approachable and have a company culture that’s friendly, you can’t have your employees be your closest friends. Being too close to your staff will blur your authority, breed favoritism, and make it difficult to fire people; but not being friendly will make for a cold working environment. How do you manage this social dynamic?