How Continued Working from Home Impacts IT for Employees
You’re looking at the post-pandemic future of work. Perhaps you’re planning a hybrid virtual model for your team. This is a sensible decision that comes with many benefits, including improved employee productivity and morale.
Remote work is not without its hurdles, however. The IT impacts alone account to enormous questions for both businesses and employees.
Today’s employees have been surveyed by multiple studies recently, and one trend is clear: staff feel they have yet to hear enough about their employers’ plans for future work arrangements.
Employees are especially anxious to learn about IT requirements, too, many of which they’re responsible for setting up themselves.
Get your plan together now with these top considerations for IT in the next-normal of remote and hybrid work.
1. Break down your software needs
There are a lot of programs your employees will need, and breaking them down into the roles they fill will help employees get set up with less stress.
Get staff onboarded with the same software, too, to ensure that everyone’s on the same platforms. This eases adoption and ensures open collaboration, and also makes the best use of resources.
The software “roles” we generally categorize platforms into include:
- Business management software (like accounting, HR and documentation)
- Communication (including quick check-ins, meetings, conferences and more)
- Project management (including tracking tasks, time management and prioritization)
- Data and security (storing and protecting critical data)
2. Guide people to training
Not everyone on your team will find learning new software easy. All the platforms you use, however, will have their own training content.
Familiarize yourself with what each platform offers in terms of articles, training videos and more, and then create a library of links to the concepts that are most important for your team’s use of the software. Store the library somewhere staff can revisit time and again.
3. Set standards for remote meetings
There’s a hard divide on this one: some people go crazy when users keep their cameras off in a virtual call, and others feel it’s unfair to require a camera.
Whatever your company decides, draft a clear policy on the expectations for holding and attending virtual calls, and then implement it consistently.
4. Communicate and open channels for reciprocity
Your employees expect communication from you about the working arrangements for the immediate and long-term future.
This sense of inclusion and feeling that employees know what to expect comes after two years where planning has been seemingly impossible. Personal and professional lives were turned on their heads with the uncertainties around the pandemic. By providing absolute clarity on business plans and IT needs and expectations for the future, businesses create greater productivity and rapport, and foster a reciprocal contribution from employees as they have ideas.
Creating a digital workplace involves more than just the right technology. To be successful, businesses need buy-in from their employees. This promotes cohesion as the business grows into an even more dynamic hybrid model.
Questions about the possibilities of remote work, or the IT requirements it implicates? Contact us to learn more.