Due to the coronavirus outbreak, many businesses have started advising employees to work from home. This is in the ongoing bid to reduce the spread of the virus. In the Prime Ministers speech on Tuesday 3^rd March 2020, Boris Johnson said enforced home working could be an option if the situation worsens.  If your employees needed to work from home would you be prepared?

Technology enabling remote working

To make working from home productive, your company needs to make sure the technology is in place. Resources needed to make working from home productive includes Remote access to company systems, consolidating calendars, communication, videoconferencing tools, group chats, instant messaging, sharing documents, project management, and so on. Make sure you have all the technology you’ll need set up already, so you are ready to go on short notice.

Actions you can take:

• Check employees VPNs Virtual Private Network.
• Ensure each employee as a laptop they can take away from the office and work from anywhere.
• Get your employees a good monitor even if you’re running a laptop. A larger display will boost their productivity.
• If it is an advantage to work face to face, you may want to supply webcams.
• Think about the work your company does and the types of communications your employees need to have. Decide which apps and services to use.

These upgrades may pay for themselves in health and productivity.

Remote working with Microsoft Teams and Office 365

Every company is different; there’s no one-size-fits-all. Eitex can help your business chose the right Office 365 products for you and the unique needs of your team. Below is a brief description of some of the services on offer to help empower your employees to communicate, collaborate, and achieve.

Microsoft Teams is a hub for teamwork which helps you boost collaboration and productivity. This hub brings everything together in a shared workspace where you can chat, meet, share files, and work with business apps.

Microsoft Outlook as well as using Outlook to send and receive emails you can also use it to manage various types of data, including calendar appointments and similar entries, tasks, contacts, and notes.

Microsoft Sharepoint is one centralised space for collaboration and document sharing. But it’s also used for workflow processes and company communications. SharePoint is not so much a programme or app that does one defined thing well; it’s a versatile platform that enables many different activities.

OneDrive for Business is a great place where you can store, sync, and share your work files. As part of your organisation’s Office 365 subscription, or SharePoint Server, you can save your files in OneDrive for Business and then work with them from any device.

Remote working with Terminal Services / Remote Desktop connection

If your company uses server technology, databases, Sage and applications which are only available on a work-based server, then enabling Terminal Services may be an option. Terminal Services, or Remote Desktop connectivity allows you to connect to your server/s from home!

Citrix GoToMyPC:

If your business isn’t ready for Office 365 and Teams, and you don’t have the infrastructure to support Terminal Services, then GoToMyPC may be a considertation. This tool allows you to ‘remote control’ your work computer from home. The only downside of this tool is that you will need a PC or laptop both at work and at home.

Preparing your company to be able to work remotely and productively is not wasted energy. At the moment, it is the threat of coronavirus, but it could be any number of things in the future.

For free advice on how to stay productive working from home contact Eitex https://www.eitex.co.uk/contacts/audit/