Our team are working hard to ensure that both borwell/CYBX and businesses of all sizes are prepared with their business processes, continuity and ongoing resilience. This article will help to give you an excellent foundation to move to a fully remote business case if it is required over the coming weeks.
- Have a transparent internal discussion – work with team members to discuss high level deliverables, coordinate tasking, specify how to communicate and arrange meetings. Daily short verbal scrums between internal teams can massively boost confidence, productivity and improve your internal communication despite changes in the business atmosphere. Make sure everyone is on the same page and focus on a 3-month plan to make sure the business is suitably prepared.
- Coping mechanisms – if you do find the business transitioning quickly to fully remote work, make sure to have communication, and encourage departments and team members to work together to solve any issues that arise. The measures are put in place to keep your workplace safe and keeping a business as usual ethic will drastically boost productivity.
- Audit your internal IT equipment – There are a few key points here, we’ll break them down into sections so you can check them one-by-one.
- Stress test your VPN if you currently use one. While the VPN may be fully functional during much of your core business, it is vital to conduct a dry test run to make sure everything works as expected. Schedule an hour out of your day and have your staff members disconnect from the office network, hotspot on their phone and connect to the VPN instead. This will provide a very accurate simulation for a fully remote business case.
- Review your existing IT configuration. Are there any remote applications that team members need to be able to communicate with that might be blocked by your firewall? Have you reviewed the firewall and anti-virus configurations on each device? All devices should have a universal configuration, and users should not be able to tamper with their work device while they are out of the office.
- Check your infrastructure. Are your servers running smoothly? Is there the chance that a server may become faulty while your team are working remotely? If there is potential for this to happen, who is able to visit the office to remediate this?
- Team Communication – Implement software that assists your team for day-to-day communication. If you are using Office 365, it is likely that you are already well established with Microsoft Teams. This application is outstanding for coordinating teams, projects and setting up remote meetings for team members to work together. Otherwise, consider implementing a solution that assists your team productivity. Focus on communication, transparency and tasking. Make sure everyone can clearly see the status of all activities.
All of the guidance provided above will give you a perfect head-start for your remote working journey. If you have any doubts or concerns about the transition, or you would like guidance on transitioning or sanity-checking your processes, please do not hesitate to contact our team for more information on 01684 377980.