4 Telecommunication Must-Haves for Remote Working to Be Effective

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have scrambled to put together quick strategies on how to implement and manage remote technology to maintain continuity and collaboration. And now with many employees expected to remain working remotely, business owners must consider the technological factors that make remote work successful.

Communication and collaboration are top of mind when it comes to connecting geographically dispersed teams, but there’s more to remote work than simply picking up the phone. Having the right infrastructure in place to manage remote collaboration starts with the right internet bandwidth, hardware and security to conduct business from your home.

Here are the top four telecommunication must-haves for nailing remote working.

1. Security

Now is not the time to lose focus on security. With a sharp increase in home workers, there are many more unknowns and with the pace at which things are changing, you cannot risk being attacked by things like malware, viruses, ransomware, etc. Keeping tabs on how you are managing remote devices and the people using it are critical.

As an example, many companies will scramble to install VPN tools on their employee personal computers that are typically not managed by IT. It’s imperative to understand that malware and viruses can easily transfer from personal computers into your network, which could bury your entire IT team, let alone your entire business.

2. Communication

How are customers communicating with you and your team? Understanding all the avenues that communication is coming through is critical to understand. Whether you have an in-house phone system, phone service is in the cloud, web chat, etc., the technology on how communication gets to people needs to be known and understood. More importantly, employees need clear direction on what they should expect and how to handle customers when they are thrown in their home environment. Change management is critical to keeping things rolling.

As an example, if you have a main phone number that rings the office where a group of your team handles the customer call, make sure you’ve communicated the expectations on how your employees will get those calls and how they are expected to manage those calls.

3. Internet

It’s one thing to manage the Internet connection in the office, now you have many people using Internet at home and in many ways it’s the Wild, Wild, West. Home users are balancing their work usage against E-learning, TV Streaming, X-Box Live, etc. Both you and your employees will need to be patient as the increased bandwidth requirements are going to cause Internet speed and employee user experience to change from what they are used to in the office, sometimes dramatically.

Additionally, the overall Internet infrastructure is being tested. There is unprecedented Internet usage at this time, so your options may be limited. Focus on what you can have manage:

Office Internet: If people access data at the office from home, determine if the slow speed is an office connection issue. Comcast, for example, has significantly lower upload speeds on their connections. Because employees are accessing data in the office, the upload speed can be your bottleneck and cause slower access.
Home Internet: Develop a strategy with your employees around how to either manage bandwidth usage at home or perhaps upgrade speeds.

4. Patience

As frenetic as things are right now, you’re not alone. Many businesses are going through some variation of change related to running the business outside the 4 walls of the office.

Know that everyone is trying their best and thank your employees for all they are doing in these quickly changing times.

Whether you have in-house IT or are using a managed IT services partner, show them some love. They are likely running at an incredible pace trying to keep up with all the change and they will be a key component to the success of your company as things move forward.

Lastly, make sure you learn and ramp up your processes as you move forward. Depending on how things transition here with COVID-19 in the coming months/year, the processes you are developing now will likely need to be repurposed or ultimately become the norm.

Developing a Remote Telecommunications Strategy

Once you get a moment to breathe, go back and start developing a well-thought-out strategy that isn’t predicated on a quick-changing world.

Need some help? The team at GO Technology has decades of experience in implementing the right technology and tools for your needs. Like the rest of the world, we have adapted to an increase in remote work since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and can assist you in navigating remote working.

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