It's 2024 and everyone is familiar with the newer, hybrid way of work. You may work at a physical location, or remotely. And whether you like it or not, businesses are pretty much expected to be "open" 24x7x365. This has created a stressful environment for small business owners especially — how can you do everything, and be everywhere all the time?? Continue reading to learn more about this hybrid, 'always-on' world, and how to navigate it. 

Maybe your typical workday starts with an early morning drive to your store front. You own a small coffee shop downtown and start getting it ready to open for the day. You check for missed calls, voicemails and emails from over the weekend, while texting your barista to make sure she can close this afternoon.

Or perhaps your workday starts with checking your meetings calendar from your phone (guilty...still in bed), then brewing some coffee at home. Once you gather yourself to your work-from-home desk setup, you get a call from your manager asking to send over the latest spreadsheet for a project you are finishing up. You send over the spreadsheet and prepare for your 9am meeting with a few of your teammates across the country. 

In both cases, you may be meeting clients or customers for lunch, or popping in and out of the store front and office throughout the week. At any given time (whether during working hours or not), you could be using your business phone, personal cell phone, or an office conference room to communicate with other employees or customers. Your business may also have peak hours where you and other employees are overloaded with calls. Sound familiar?

Collaboration tools are nothing new, but the pandemic pushed forward the acceptance and enablement of hybrid work more than anything else in the last fifty years. In fact, IWG’s survey has found that more than 50% of employees worldwide are working outside of their main office headquarters for at least 2.5 days a week, and 62% have a flexible working policy in place. Yet, 90% of workers experience challenges collaborating - like low productivity, too many apps and vendors, fragmented communications and more.

Essentials for Hybrid Work

Here are some things to consider to ensure your business has the necessary tools in place to breed a successful hybrid, "always-on" work environment. 

• Remote and Reliable Internet: For a seamless employee and customer experience, your business needs access to high-speed internet. You can't afford to lose internet for even 30 minutes, or deal with a lagging connection every time you share a large file. Luckily with Fioptics Internet, you are guaranteed fast, reliable and affordable fiber internet with speeds up to 1 Gig.
• Integrated Security: Businesses of all sizes should keep security and cybersecurity top-of-mind. This means providing security via updated firewalls, VPNs, multi-factor authentication and encryption. You need to be able to track and control who has access to what and when. altafiber's Secure Network provides your business with constant threat protection, so that you can focus on your business' success, instead.
• Advanced Calling Tools: Your business requires a modern, productive suite that enables collaboration anywhere and everywhere. As shown above, employees need to easily communicate all throughout the day, whether at home, in the office, or at your business. Whether it's utilizing auto attendant and voicemail to email transcriptions for offline hours, or call queues and call forwarding for peak hours - it's essential to have advanced calling to maximize your business' potential. Business Calling is our solution that combines elevated cloud/VoIP calling with Webex messaging, meetings and more.

Check out this infographic that further shows different employees who benefit from a Webex tool like Business Calling in their day-to-day work tasks. To give their employees flexibility and better navigate the 'always-on' expectations of customers, Techaisle states 93% of your small business peers are prioritizing hybrid workplace technology adoption. Are you?

Start today at altafiber.com/business.