How to Help Your Staff Work Remotely (& Why It’s Good for Business)

With COVID-19 taking hold globally, the prospect of schools and businesses being placed into quarantine is becoming less a case of ‘if’ than ‘when’. Remote working and telecommuting may not be something you have planned for, however, it’s about to become a reality, whether you like it or not.

As companies contemplate how to continue operations away from the office, it’s time to assess your organisation’s capacity to support staff working from home. Is your business ready to support your staff to work remotely? Do you have the technology in place for collaboration away from the office? Are you ready to take advantage of the many benefits of telecommuting?

Why Telecommuting is Good for Business

Telecommuting may not have been one of the goals for your business in 2020 but it presents a golden opportunity that you can’t ignore. The fact is, businesses who embrace remote working are in the box seat when it comes to attracting and retaining good staff. They are also best placed to withstand the economic effects of a sharp downturn.

You may already know that being able to work from home is a much sought-after employment condition. Being able to offer this to prospective employees may see you become an employer of choice. It also allows you to choose from a wider range of applicants, no longer restricted to a narrow geographic area, improving your pool of talent.

Instituting remote working for your staff also benefits your business more broadly. It will save you money in rent, office equipment and hardware, particularly in costly city locations. It can also boost productivity, providing staff with a less distracting workplace, eliminating the daily commute and giving them the flexibility to get their work done when they are most productive.

For staff, being able to work from home can keep them in the workforce while balancing their caring commitments and support them in times of illness or injury. More immediately, telecommuting may very well be the difference between your business staying open for business or closing up shop for good over the coming months.

Allowing your staff to work remotely from home makes good business sense, particularly in the time of COVID-19. So, what does your business need to do to take advantage of these many benefits?

How to Help Your Staff Work From Home

The first step is to look at your technology and identify what needs to be put in place to facilitate remote working. This is something we can do, as we specialise in the main areas of focus for a remote workforce – communication, security and accessibility.

  • Hosted PBX phone services allow staff to work from the same phone system and phone number from any location. Mobile handsets can be taken home, connected to home internet and operated exactly the same as if they were still in the office.
  • Cloud storage. Storing data in the cloud means giving your staff the ability to access files as you would in the office from any location with an internet connection. This means documents are available 24/7, whenever your staff need them.
  • Communication tools. Video conferencing allows you to have virtual team meetings, also opening up the opportunity to hold meetings with customers online as well. Virtual whiteboards also allow you to scribble and draw as you would in a meeting.
  • Email solutions. Email hosted in the cloud as opposed to local exchange servers means that there’s no need to access physical equipment in an office. This makes it easy and secure for your staff to respond to email when working from home.
  • Cloud storage services can integrate with a wide range of other services, delivering a range of tools and applications to boost productivity and performance:

 

Slack G Suite Office 365 Trello
Zoom Canva HelloSign DocuSign
AdobeSign Notarize FreshBooks Vimeo
airSlate pdfFiller Smallpdf Nitro
AutoCAD Pixlr X WeVideo Clipchamp
DocSend LINE WORKS Microsoft Teams WhatsApp

 

Luckily Trouble Free Computing Solutions can support every aspect of your transition from office-based services to fully remote operations. Delivering telephony, IT and website solutions, we’re here to help your business make the most of available technology so you can get on with business.

Moving from Bricks & Mortar to eCommerce

If telecommuting means a shift in operations from a shop front to eCommerce, we can assist you in successfully making that transition too. We can develop a new dedicated eCommerce website for you or convert your existing site to an eCommerce platform. We can also promote your website through search engine optimisation and search engine marketing.

If internet access is a problem for staff, we can also assist in procuring internet connections and help them set up their home offices. In addition, we can deliver a hosted PBX system to manage remote telecommunications, establish a secure cloud storage service and we can even help migrate your files.

Telecommuting is here, whether you like it or not. Why not take advantage of the many benefits of supporting your staff to work from home with the help of Trouble Free Computing Solutions? Get in touch with us today to discuss your IT, telephony and website needs by calling us on (02) 4911 9072 or contacting us online to find out more.