The reliance on remote workers has grown exponentially over the past couple of years, and presents businesses some stark challenges as well as some amazing opportunities. As a result, a lot of businesses have tried to find middle ground and started implementing a hybrid approach to their workforce. Let’s take a look at what hybrid work entails and how it can benefit your organization.
Today, there is a greater focus on mental health and wellbeing than ever before, especially in the shadow of the pandemic. Do you want to improve your employees’ relationships with their colleagues, family, and other important people in their lives? The key to doing so might be remote work, according to a new survey.
Remote work has been growing for years, but as it becomes more commonplace it becomes more difficult for business owners and managers to ascertain how engaged a remote employee is. This week, we thought we’d discuss a couple of ways that you can keep your remote employees engaged and productive.
Remote work is more common than ever before, but it wasn’t always this way. It’s still a relatively new method of operations, and while there are quite a few benefits for both employees and employers, there are other impacts related to remote work that can have far-reaching consequences.
Workforces have been increasingly distributed and many businesses aim to continue that strategy for the foreseeable future. There are a fair share of challenges that distributed employees have themselves, but for the business, it can be tough getting them to do the things that need to be done to secure the business. Here are a few actions that need to be taken if you want to make that happen.
We’re coming up on two years since the COVID-19 pandemic changed many workplaces’ operational strategies from in-person work to remote work. In that time, many businesses who hadn’t initially considered remote working to be a viable option have now made it a core part of their onboarding process. This means there are plenty of workers who are now beginning remote work who haven’t really experienced it before. Today, we thought we’d go through a couple of strategies that will help remote employees be as productive as possible as they work from home.
The COVID-19 pandemic is still in full swing, and while many companies buckled under the pressure put on them to maintain operations, others have managed to adapt through the use of remote technology solutions. Businesses have put into place policies surrounding this remote technology, many of which are both helpful and harmful.
Have your opinions of remote work changed at all over the past year and a half, or do you still want your employees to return to the office in full force? Many major companies, despite initially advocating for remote work, are sending mixed signals on the topic, including Microsoft. What can we learn from the experiences of these companies?
The COVID-19 pandemic forced much of the workforce to work remotely, but now that the pandemic is receding in several parts of the world, the question of if this workforce will continue to work remotely is up for debate. A report from Gartner suggests that things will move in the opposite direction from what you might expect. Let’s dive into what this report suggests and what it might mean for your business moving forward.
With countless threats out there waiting for IT professionals to slip up, it’s no small wonder that many of these professionals are opting into what is called a zero-trust policy for their security standards. But what is a zero-trust policy, and why is it so effective at curbing potentially dangerous situations for your business? Let’s investigate this in today’s blog article.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced much of the workforce to work remotely, but now that the pandemic is marginally receding in several parts of the world, the question of if this workforce will continue to work remotely is up for debate. A report from Gartner suggests that things will move in the opposite direction from what you might expect. Let’s dive into what this report suggests and what it might mean for your business moving forward.
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.
Before 2020, remote work was already growing, albeit much more slowly than we see this year (for obvious reasons), but now that just as many workers are working from home (or have the option to work remotely) as are working in the office, we’re beginning to see that it is a functional business model. With many remote workers fairly new to it, we thought we’d see what gadgets members of the Gig Economy are using.
Now that the school year has begun many young children are juggling between altered classroom setups and continued remote education. Naturally, this has caused a lot of people no small amount of stress. To try and relieve this stress and make the process of working or learning from home as effective as possible, we wanted to share a few tips with you.
If you’re trying to productively work from home, what you use and how you use it are equally important considerations. To assist you, we felt it would be helpful to share a few best practices for each variable, so that you might be able to boost your remote productivity.
While it seems that some business will best be conducted remotely for some time yet, it is still very important to start planning for a return to in-house operations now. This will help them to hit the ground running when the floodgates open back up. For this week’s tip, we’re going over how to return to the office after working remotely, while also reviewing some best practices for adjusting to remote work (just in case).
Many businesses are currently finding the best course of action for them to take right now for the good of their employees is to adopt remote work policies. However, this puts a lot of responsibility on the employees to conduct themselves appropriately and spend the time they should be working diligently.
Skipping the commute, wearing comfortable pants, and foregoing everyday office distractions has become the new norm during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s very likely that the businesses that do well with a remote workforce might continue to keep operating that way even after we’re all able to see each other again.
Before the pandemic, if you were to ask a hundred small business owners what their biggest turn off was when it comes to allowing their staff to work from home, most would tell you that they didn’t have the confidence that their employees would treat their jobs as seriously. Less work would get done. At home, there are pets, television, video games, children, and a number of other distractions that would seemingly fight for the attention of your employees.
At the office, the business owner and managers can march around and make sure everybody is working hard, right?
It reminds me of a Dilbert strip. The exchange goes something like this:
Dilbert: I’d like to work from home so I can be more productive.
Boss: I can’t manage you as easily when you’re out of the office.
Dilbert: That’s why I’d be more productive.
Boss: But you’d be missing out on all of this.
Granted, every manager has their own management style, and every business has their own needs when it comes to keeping things productive, and there are always going to be employees that buck the trends. Still, a lot of employees around the world right now are suddenly discovering the fact that they are able to be as productive, if not more productive, when working from home.
Much of the office workforce is getting very used to wearing those comfy pants, and it’s going to be strange (and a little disappointing) having to go back to the old ways of doing things.
Telecommuting isn’t anything new, but experts were pretty sure it was going to take a bit longer to catch on. Many organizations have been offering different flavors of remote employment for a while now. Some might have certain departments or employees working from home all the time, or they might offer flexibility to have people work from home a few days every week.
Either way, these organizations are using it as both a perk for prospective employees, and as a way to cut down on costs. It’s not cheap to keep and maintain a working area for employees. Keeping the lights on, the A.C. running, and maintaining a cubicle and workstation adds up.
Look at your office space. Add up the rent/lease costs, utilities, and the snack budget. It’s a big chunk of money. Imagine reducing that down to almost nothing - moving your IT to the cloud, finding a shared space for meetings and interviews (if needed), and ditching the expensive office space might look pretty attractive once you discover you don’t really need it.
The Connection, Inc has worked with a lot of businesses during this pandemic to help get them set up to allow their workforce to be productive from home. We can help your business implement new technologies to make it easier for your staff to collaborate and work from home (or anywhere) for the long term.
Whether you need immediate help or you are looking to plan out strategies to keep things running smoothly for the long run, give us a call at (732) 291-5938 to discuss all the options.
The Internet has never been more valuable than it is today. Over the past couple of months tens of millions of students have been introduced to telelearning, millions of businesses have promoted telework, people are meeting with their friends online, and consuming content from their living rooms (or their home offices) at rates never before seen. So what about security? Today we’ll take a look at how all this use is changing the Internet.
Prior to the pandemic, studies showed that only 5.2 percent of Americans worked from home in 2017. That’s roughly eight million people, or one out of every 20. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 29 percent of Americans can do their job from home. All other 71 percent have to physically be in a place to do their work.
At present, telework has been made available as businesses look to maintain their revenue streams. In fact, it seems that COVID-19 has done something that almost a decade of advocacy has done: made business owners realize the benefits of telework. The question becomes, now that we know that telework is possible (or even preferred), how will this change the Internet?
The Internet is now hosting roughly a third of workers who are doing their jobs from their homes, most students who spend half of their day online, and millions upon millions of online shoppers who are more apt to use online resources than go out and put themselves in physical risk. That’s not even mentioning the normal use of streaming services and typical online-based services. So the answer is that the Internet is holding up extremely well.
Most Internet service providers have loosened or eliminated the normal data caps, supposedly saving people billions of dollars, but it is quite curious that these companies claim that the caps were in place to ensure the service works well. We’re led to believe that they are helping people by eliminating data caps, but it looks like the Internet would function fine without them. It will be interesting to see how people react when they are put back in place.
It’s not perfect for everyone: Rural users with limited access to broadband still struggle to get the bandwidth they need. Larger cities, where infrastructure hasn’t been updated in some time, are seeing more downtime. Still, tens of thousands of businesses are able to continue operations, giving people hope.
Businesses that have been able to make it through the stay-at-home orders using remote technology are fortunate, but many of them have been targeted by hackers. By allowing remote work, you open your business to a whole list of new threats. Making sure your systems are up-to-date, and that your people understand how they are the first wave of defense, can take you very far in this environment.
This whole era could change the office forever. Imagine it, productive and happy workers, fewer expenses, sweatpants. Or, we’ll forget this has ever happened and go back to working like we used to. Regardless of how it is going, your business needs to have the comprehensive network security tools in place including:
And more.
If you would like to talk to one of our IT professionals about network security, telework, or any other technology-based solution used to make business possible during these tough times, call us today at (732) 291-5938.
People are defined by what they do. The first question they are asked by someone they haven’t seen in some time isn’t about their health or their emotions, it is about what they do for a living. With the COVID-19 outbreak, tens of millions of people are out of work and just as many are working from home. For the business owner, this may not be an ideal situation, but if you are able to keep an open mind, you will find that there is a lot of good that could come from having your workers out of the office. This month, we will discuss the benefits of remote work, the gig economy, and some tools that you can use to ensure that remote workers are keeping up their productivity.
Mobile? Grab this Article
