The “office” environment has changed dramatically in a very short time due to COVID-19. Most businesses had to quickly adapt to shifting their workforce immediately and have their employees start working remotely. With such a sudden change, this left many businesses asking themselves if their employees have the right tools to stay productive while remote.
A study by Stanford University found that workers were 13 percent more productive when working from home. That’s a good news story for businesses suddenly shifting their workforce to remote providing a sense of hope that they should maintain their productivity and keep running smoothly even if their employees are not in the office.
To ensure your employees have what they need to continue to function as if they were in the office make sure these key factors are met:
- Internet Access at their remote location
- A laptop or desktop computer
- A landline or mobile phone
- Remote access tools to allow employees to access the corporate network
Communication and collaboration are key factors to stay connected from anywhere. The following products will help your business get the most out of your productivity keeping everything running smoothly as if you were right in the office.
- Internet bandwidth with the fastest speeds provided by the only fiber network in town, your business can be supported with virtually unlimited bandwidth to support VPN access and work from home.
- Microsoft Office 365 gives anytime, anywhere cloud access to email, calendar, file-sharing, collaboration and Microsoft applications.
- WebEx provides a key component to allow video, audio and web conferencing to keep your teams and clients connected
- Cloud based phone solutions, like UCaaS offer a full-featured cloud phone system with mobile and remote capabilities.
- eComFax while you are working remote, this allows you to fax-enable your email instantly without any need for a fax machine.
As companies begin to implement work-at-home policies to add flexibility or address a crisis, here are some tips to help keep teammates, clients, and partners on the same page:
- Encourage alignment by having everyone use the same tools.
- Create online project spaces to keep people working together.
- Store meeting documents, presentations, and notes in a shared location.
- Record every meeting to capture ideas and provide reference for teammates unable to attend.
- Use your video camera to make the meeting more personal.
Now that you have started to adjust to the fact of going remote, you are starting to realize that it doesn’t have to be such a terrible thing for your business’s productivity. Working remote can be a good change of pace. Technology solutions have come a long way to allow remote workers secured connectivity and collaboration resources to be successful. As a leader in the tech industry, Cincinnati Bell is keeping businesses connected during this difficult time with a lineup of product solutions.
altafiber is working hard to keep our businesses connected and provide helpful information during this difficult time.
Visit altafiber.com/covid19 for more details on how to keep your business running effectively.