A recent article in The Atlantic made it clear that work after COVID-19 will never be the same. A lot of people who never thought they would be working from home – teachers, some medical and mental health professionals, government employees – found themselves doing exactly that. Previously many companies did not encourage working remotely because they feared a drop in productivity, but, suddenly, they didn’t have a choice if they wanted to stay open.
Well, as the saying goes, you can’t unring a bell.
Now two-thirds of Americans are working from home and some of us simply don’t want to go back. Studies show that many people enjoy working from home and are actually more productive and have better morale. Once kids go back to school and parents aren’t being asked to do two jobs at once, that will only improve the situation for employees. Yet, there are others who miss the social interaction an office setting provides and look forward to getting back to business as usual.
Is your organization set to handle the challenges that will inevitably come up from having both onsite and remote employees? Right now, many organizations are using a cobbled together patchwork of apps to get things done and a lot of those apps are down to personal preference or whatever’s available. Zoom, Skype or Hangouts? Dropbox, Drive, or Hightail? Some people are even using Facebook Messenger for team meetings. To keep projects moving, is Slack the best? Or maybe Jira? How about an Excel spreadsheet?
All of this is in addition to security concerns. Are employees’ home Wi-Fi setups secure? If teams have company-provided laptops, do those machines contain valuable company data? Is it backed up? And who has access to that machine? If personal computers are being used, can IT be certain the whole network won’t be hit with a virus or malware?
The only way to get answers to these questions is to take time to assess. As I have stated before, Service Continuity Plans should be developed in conjunction with a Business Impact Analysis and an assessment of your current capabilities and services. Ensuring you’ll have everything you need going forward, come what may, is crucial. We had literally no time to prepare for COVID – and chances are we’ll have no time to prepare for the next business challenge. OwlPoint is an expert in IT assessments and Service Continuity Planning. Let’s work together to ensure you’re ready for anything.
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