Business tech: Adapting to remote working within your business

Throughout 2020, many businesses were advised to utilise remote working wherever possible, as part of coronavirus advice and restrictions. Both small and large companies saw entire workforces fulfilling their roles without stepping into the office.

While many employers (and employees) welcomed the change and its convenience, a lot of us of also saw some complications or challenges when adapting to new technology and processes. Off-site working can be pretty convenient, but navigating the new digital needs of our operations can be equally tricky.

Despite this, many businesses and industries remain interested in incorporating remote working into their operations on a more permanent basis. According to our own research, only 7% of employers won’t offer working from home as an option to their workforce, after lockdown restrictions ease. If you’re considering working from home as a long term option, we’ve put together some advice around adapting to your new technological needs.

How has coronavirus impacted the workplace?

The coronavirus crisis has drastically changed many parts of society – not least the workplace. About every kind of workplace, from offices to construction sites, had to adapt their working environments to stay safe. From installing sterilisation stations and introducing PPE, to complete building closures – every sector saw some sort of change.

Benefits and drawbacks of remote working

The first step towards adapting to remote working within your business is to assess whether it really is a viable option. Particularly if you’re considering making investments in your remote working strategy, it’s advisable to first consider how remote working would affect each area of your business.

Advantages of remote working

Convenience
Reduced/no commute
Flexibility
Some workers are more productive
Improved work-life balance
No geographical restrictions
Potential for business savings on rent or utilities

Disadvantages of remote working

Technical difficulties with business equipment off-site
Technical difficulties with employee broadband or service
Potential for reduced collaboration
Some workers feel less productive
Potential rise in employee utility costs

What does permanent remote working look like?

With a range of personalities, abilities and working preferences on your team, it can be difficult to discern the best approach to permanent working from home arrangements. However, with the right technology and approach, it’s possible to create a bespoke remote working arrangement for your whole business. For inspiration, we’ve outlined the most common remote working structures below.

Business-wide working from home

If you’re looking to implement remote working full-time across the whole business, this obviously yields the most financial advantages. Even if you were to invest in all new digital services to implement the change, it would likely cost less overall than overheads saved such as rent and utilities.

However, you could also offer full-time remote working to anyone who’d like it, rather than enforcing this company wide. While this might not save the same amount in costs, the option could well lead to higher employee retention and productivity, with employees having more freedom to work in a way that suits them.

Departmentalised and part-time working from home

For some companies, business-wide remote working on a permanent basis just isn’t plausible. However, that’s not to say you have to give up hopes for a more flexible, convenient working arrangement.

Departmentalised or part-time working for members allows you to strategically design a remote working structure that works for your team or business. It’s a more flexible option, that can take many different forms, such as:

Departmentalised remote working involves offering remote working to specific departments that can successfully fulfill their roles from home.
Alternating remote working allows you to stagger who’s working from home at what time. This is a good option if you always need someone on-site, but don’t require the whole team.
Part-time remote working involves having your team come to your workplace, but not on every day of their working week. This is similar to alternating remote working, but means the whole team is present at once.

Adapting to home working

As previously mentioned, a lot of technological hiccups with remote working start in the homes of your workforce. According to our research, the most common issues with working from home include:

Slow internet connections
Issues accessing company systems from home
Patchy mobile signals
Poorly integrated communication systems

While frustrating, and often time-consuming, there are viable solutions for every size of business which directly. If you’re looking to strengthen your plans for working from home in the future – or need to make improvements straight away – here are some digital elements to consider:

Broadband and network management

If you’re concerned about drops in productivity due to poor internet connection, equip your team with Zen’s homeworker broadband package. Enhanced support and the ability to proritise work devices means everyone will have access to fast, reliable speeds – wherever they’re working.

You could also invest in a leased fibre ethernet connection, to provide a fast, dedicated, and resilient connection to your office and the internet.

Communication

Unfortunately, issues with communication aren’t as simple to solve as internet speeds or network issues. With users having their own preferences and technical skill levels, getting everyone on the same page with communication systems can be a little tricky.

However, we recommend implementing a cloud-based communication system and collaborative software and services like Office 365. It’s important that calls and messaging are efficient, and accessible to everyone, for effective and reliable communication. Software that makes it easier to create, share and collaborate on files is also essential to good remote working practices.

In order to implement these systems successfully, you could create guides and appoint specific colleagues to contact for help. In terms of installation, it’s usually possible to install and access these services completely remotely, depending on your existing systems.

Security and accessibility

With workers being at home, rather than just a few steps away from your IT department, successful remote working needs to be secure, and fairly easy to navigate. Hosted desktops and virtual desktops are a great way to provide your colleagues with the same access to company files as they usually would, without compromising security.

What next?

Whatever you choose, we recommend collaborating with your team to create a plan with benefits that each employee can access. As always, a bespoke approach is needed when navigating the corporate technological landscape. For more helpful advice and information about your digital business needs, visit our ThoughtHub or speak to our business team who are on hang to advice and help you get started. Give them a call on 01706 902583 or get in touch online.