How Businesses Can Work from Home During COVID-19

As the global menace of COVID-19 continues to rise, businesses around the world have chosen to shut their doors, shutter their blinds, and transfer nearly all of their operations online – perhaps even permanently for some. From IT support firms to retail stores, it seems there isn’t any organisation that hasn’t felt the pressure to start working from home.

As expected, this decision isn’t an easy one, and it can be difficult for businesses to understand precisely how to prepare for the switch. If you find yourself wondering the same, keep on reading to fully understand what remote work could mean for you and your employees.

What Is Remote Working?

Ever since the creation of the internet, the modern world has seen a steady rise in the amount of remote work available. Of course, it’s never been at such a rapid level as now. For some, working without a physical office poses little to no challenge, such as for IT support companies, when most of their operations are already online. However, others might find it to be more challenging.

Remote working doesn’t mean that communication comes to a complete stop. Colleagues can still connect through video call platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, share files through Office 365 or Dropbox, and can contact clients through an email or phone call. With the proper organisation, remote work can be just as efficient as in-person collaboration – if not more.

Of course, remote working isn’t always for everyone – nor is it always necessary. For example, the director of Sphere IT – an IT support provider based in London – notes that “maintaining efficient business IT support and operations is more important than ever for companies working remotely.” However, for companies forced to keep staff apart during the COVID-19 crisis, or those with employees around the world, there is no other choice.

How Businesses Can Make the Switch

When it’s time for your team to move into their home offices, there are three main methods of how to make the process as simple as possible.

Use a 3^rd Party

The Cloud is now one of the most useful tools for businesses entering the digital revolution. With it, your team can access files, communicate with others, recover lost data, and more – all from home. Most IT support companies can offer some sort of company package for your team, including Microsoft Office 365 and Office G Suite services.

Utilise Services You Already Have

If you’re like most modern businesses, then you probably already have an in-house IT department or an outsourced IT support firm handling your IT systems and software. Fortunately, these investments don’t have to go to waste when working remotely, as your team can access them from anywhere with an internet connection.

The process is uncomplicated: from your current home office, connect to your regular office’s network. From there, you and your collages can use your services and software like normal. It’s also recommended that you use a VPN to protect your new setup. Simply contact whoever handles your businesses IT systems to configure your office IT setup with a VPN endpoint – sometimes such functionality is included with your router however if this is not the case you can setup at VPN server on one of your existing Microsoft servers which will integrate with your active directory for authentication.

Use A Remote Desktop

To connect to a remote desktop, you can use one of two methods.

First, you can connect to a cloud-based hosted desktop. These are available from providers like Microsoft, Amazon, WorkSpaces, and more. With scalable packages, any business can utilise these services according to their needs.

Alternatively, from your home laptop/PC you can connect directly to your main office computer – or instead a terminal server if your firm has one – so to access all the services and software currently installed onto that computer. Configuring remote access via RDP (remote desktop protocol) will allow you to have each user connect directly to their work PC without the use of purchasing any additional hardware or software which works out as a quick and easy method to have your users efficiently work from home.

Conclusion

Ultimately, there is far more to consider when working remotely, and you may want to reach out to an IT support MSP if the process proves to be too difficult. However, with these three steps, your business can fully understand its options when it comes to responding to COVID-19 without interrupting productivity.