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COVID-19: Remote-working Checklist

Sat, 06 Jun 2020 07:00:00 +0000

Many if not most organisations have already crossed the 'working from home' bridge either successfully or terribly.

If you’re on an IT team, you’re probably used to preparing laptops for staff to use remotely, and setting up mobile phones with access to company data.

But global concerns over the current coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, and the need to keep at-risk staff away from the office, means that lots of companies may soon and suddenly end up with lots more staff working from home indefinitely. For a business that has already deployed a remote-working strategy, this process is probably pretty familiar. For the businesses that haven't, it can be a logistical, security and financial nightmare.

Even for businesses that are no stranger to remote-working it's still a very different situation. If you have colleagues who need to work from home specifically to stay away from the office, you can no longer use the tried-and-tested approach of getting them to come in once to collect their new laptop and phone, and to receive the on-site training that you hope will make them an effective teleworker. You may end up needing to set remote users up from scratch, entirely remotely, and that might be something you’ve not done a lot of in the past.

I can imagine you and your business are very busy so without further wait - here are our five tips for working from home effectively and safely.

1. Make sure your users have everything they need

It's without a doubt the most important. Not only does it ensure your users are happy (productive) remote-workers, it means they don't revert to finding their own uncontrolled or 'shadow' solutions to their problems (we will come to shadow solutions in a minute or so).

If users genuinely can’t do their job without access to server X or to system Y, then there’s no point in sending them off to work from home without access to X and Y.

Make sure you have got your chosen remote access solution working reliably first – force it on yourself! – before expecting your users to adopt it.

If there are any differences between what they might be used to and what they are going to get, explain the difference clearly and don’t leave them to find that out on their own. They’ll not only be annoyed, but will probably also try to make up their own tricks for bypassing the problem, such as asking colleagues to upload files to private accounts instead of using a storage system they thought they would have had access to remotely.

If you’re the user, try to be understanding if there are things you used to be able do in the office that you have to manage without at home.

This is an excellent opportunity to really evaluate what software you are using in your business and if there are a lot of business-critical tasks you aren't able to complete because you aren't in the office then I hate to break it to you - it's not 1996 anymore! It's 2020 and the cloud is here in a big way.

To see how cloud technology can empower your business today, check out our post on our favourite remote-working software.

2. Make sure you can see what your users are doing

Don’t just leave your users to their own devices (literally or figuratively).

If you’ve set up automatic updating for them, make sure you also have a way to check that it’s working, and be prepared to spend time online helping them fix things if they go wrong. If any of their systems or software has produced warnings or errors that you know they will have seen, make sure you review those warnings too, and let your users know what they mean and what you expect them to do about any issues that may arise.

Don’t patronise your users, because no one likes that; but don’t leave them to fend for themselves either – show them a bit of cybersecurity love and you are very likely to find that they repay it.

3. Make sure they have somewhere to report security issues

If you haven’t already, set up an easily remembered email address, such as security@yourcompany.com, where users can report security issues quickly and easily.

Remember that a lot of cyberattacks succeed because the crooks try over and over again until one user makes an innocent mistake – so if the first person to see a new threat has somewhere to report it where they know they won’t be judged or criticised (or, worse still, ignored), they’ll end up helping everyone else.

Teach your users – in fact, this goes for office-based staff as well as remote-workers – only to reach out to you for cybersecurity assistance by using the email address or phone number you gave them. (Consider snail-mailing them a card or a sticker with the details printed on it.)

If they never make contact using links or phone numbers supplied by email, they they are very much less likely to get scammed or phished.

4. Keep shadow IT out of the shadow

Shadow IT is where non-IT staff find their own ways of solving technical problems, for convenience or speed. If you have colleagues who are used to working together in the office, but who end up flung apart and unable to meet up, it’s quite likely that they might come up with their own ways of collaborating online – using tools they’ve never tried before.

Sometimes, you might even be happy for them to do this, if it’s a cheap and happy way of boosting team dynamics. For example, they might open an account with an online white-boarding service – perhaps even one you trust perfectly well – on their own payment card and plan to claim it back later.

The first risk everyone thinks about in cases like this is, “What if they make a security blunder or leak data they shouldn’t?”

But there’s another problem that lots of companies forget about, namely: what if, instead of being a security disaster, it’s a conspicuous success? A temporary solution put in place to deal with a public health issue might turn into an important part of the company’s online presence and so make sure you know whose credit card it’s charged to, and make sure you can get access to the account if the person who originally created it forgets the password, or cancels their card.

So-called “shadow IT” isn’t just a risk if it goes wrong – it can turn into a complicated liability if it goes right!

Closing comments

Most of all, if you and your users suddenly need to get into remote-working, be prepared to meet each other half way.

For example, if you’re the user, and your IT team suddenly insists that you start using a password manager and 2FA (those second-factor login codes you have to type in every time) then just say “Sure,” even if you hate 2FA and have avoided it in your personal life because you find it inconvenient.

Likewise if you’re the IT admin, don’t ignore your users, even if they ask questions you think they should know the answer to by now, or if they ask for something you’ve already said No to, because it might very well be that they’re asking because you didn’t explain clearly the first time, or because the feature they need really is important to doing their job properly.

We’re living in tricky times, so try not to let matters of public health cause the sort of friction that gets in the way of doing cybersecurity properly. And if you need assistance with any of this, join our partners in empowering their businesses with our intelligent solutions.

Chat to the Team

COVID-19: Our Favourite Remote-working Tools

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 13:02:41 +0000

Whether your business had already implemented remote-working ideologies or it's all very new to your business, it's definitely been a general-culture shock to the working world. Businesses that never thought they could work from home are now embracing wonderful and sometimes whacky ways to get their work done remotely, sometimes whilst even compromising security (yes Zoom we are talking about you).

Our partners are generally well equipped already. More than 80% of what Ostratto helps our partners' businesses with, resides on cloud technology. That's smart business solutions that are accessible from anywhere at anytime.

For the businesses that we don't yet have a relationship with, firstly; welcome(!) and secondly; this article is for you. It's a quick run through of our favourite tools that will help you conduct your business from pretty much anywhere.

We'll firstly break it down a bit into some sub-categories of the products we offer today. Select to jump to the sections:

Communication Collaboration Productivity

Looks uncomfortable. Credit: unsplash

Communication

Communication during these tricky times is absolutely vital. It's the difference between a happy and productive worker and a very unhappy unmotivated one. Here's some of our favourite communication tools.

Google Meet

Video meetings for your business. Meet takes the headaches out of joining a video call at work. Just set up a meeting and share a link. No worrying about whether teammates, clients, or customers have the right accounts or plug-ins. With a fast, lightweight interface and smart participant management, 100 + person video calls are a breeze.

Meet is perfect for keeping connected with your team and your customers from one product, and it comes included in the G Suite package as standard.

Google Chat

A messaging platform built for teams. Hangouts Chat makes it easy for teams to stay in contact with instant messaging. From direct messages to group conversations, Chat helps teams collaborate easily and efficiently. With dedicated, virtual rooms to house projects over time — plus threaded conversations — Chat makes it simple to track progress and follow up tasks. Chat currently supports 28 languages and each room can support up to 8,000 members.

RingCentral

RingCentral is our preferred cloud phone solution. Get an all-inclusive business phone system with online meetings, messaging, and more. Integrated perfectly into your business systems, you can expect big business benefits without the high cost and complexity. Your teams will have all the accessibility they need to seamlessly communicate and collaborate from anywhere, becoming more productive, effective, and efficient as a result. You can host video meetings with up to 1000 participants too - which is pretty cool.

We love it because it's super reliable and it provides a one-stop shop for all business communications.

Zoho Campaigns

Email marketing software that drives sales. Create, send, and track email campaigns that help you build a strong customer base. From beautiful email templates to an easy-to-use editor, and automation tools to real-time analytics, Zoho Campaigns has it covered.

We use this to keep in touch with all of our partners with ease, updating them on the current situation and also providing regular tips on staying productive.

Collaboration

Even the most communicative team still need ways of collaborating effectively. If your team is still saying 'are you done with that spreadsheet as I need to make edits', then this category is for you. It's 2020 and things have changed now, you old-timer you.

Google Docs

Create and edit documents directly in your browser – no dedicated software required. Several people can work at the same time, and every change is saved automatically. Work on a single document with team members or people outside your company. See edits as others type, communicate through built-in chat and ask questions by including comments.

It really is powerful word editing, made simple and accessible with the power of the cloud. It comes with even the most basic version of G Suite.

Google Sheets

Collaborative, smart, secure spreadsheets for fast-moving organisations. Sheets was designed with the needs of agile organisations in mind. As Sheets is cloud-based, it enables you to collaborate with anyone, anytime, anywhere. It's built on top of Google’s infrastructure, which gives you the freedom to create, while helping to keep your information secure.

Again, no software to install and super simple to use.

Google Slides

Slides is Google's offering of a presentation tool. It allows you to create and edit polished presentations in your browser – no software required. Several people can work at the same time so that everyone always has the latest version. It helps you to make your ideas shine with a variety of presentation themes, hundreds of fonts, embedded video, animations, and more. All included in G Suite.

Productivity

Productivity is often the measure of a successful migration to remote-working strategies. With recent developments in the technical industry it's still very possible to maintain a very high level of productivity. We've covered a few excellent communication products and we've also covered a selection of smart collaboration software.

G Suite

G Suite - our bread and butter. It provides all the tools a business needs to do business, in an extremely affordable package. An integrated suite of secure, cloud-native collaboration and productivity apps powered by Google AI. Includes Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Meet and more, all in the same place accessible with the same login.

We use G Suite for our business email, communications and productivity needs. The prices start at £4.60 per user/month and there's no contract, so it's really ideal for new businesses who don't want to commit to anything serious in the early days.

What I think is pretty cool is that the likes of Netflix and Colgate are using exactly the same product as a start-up business of one user. It really is modern-day cloud computing, allowing the little guys play with the big guys with no capital required. Awesome!

Zoho Projects

When we do any commissioning work such as website design or a system setup, one of our most used products is Projects. It lets us track all ongoing tasks so that an overall project progress can be seen - and shared with clients if necessary. It can help you plan your work, track it efficiently, and collaborate with your team wherever they are.

The main features we use are the tasks, the activities, issues (at times a great tool to nudge clients if we're waiting on them) and also the integration with Google Drive so that we can share files securely within the project space without needing to upload anything.

A great tool for teams that still need to be working on projects from different places.

Zoho Bookings

We've noticed a large increase in online classes since the lockdown here in the UK. Classes for exercise and yoga type activities the most prevalent. Should you be needing to host this sort of event, you need a solid way of offering booking for your 'students' - Bookings has you covered. It syncs your calendars while letting students/customers self-schedule and pay for appointments. The user interface is completely customisable to fit your brand and there is an email function that sends emails to your customers automatically reminding them when an appointment is due.

This one is for personal trainers, coaches teachers, trainers and just about anybody else that needs a way to manage classes easily.

So there you have it. They are our favourite tools because they are cost-effective, smart and they are generally awesome. They all also meet our principles.

If you need any help with working remotely during these very difficult times please just reach out. We will be happy to assist and if we can help your business in any way at no cost, we absolutely will.

Stay safe.

Help me work smarter

5 Tips to Balance Working From Home and Parenting

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:44:04 +0000

The average office-based worker may find the transition to working from home to be challenging enough. You’re surrounded by potential distractions, tempted by your fridge and comfy bed, and loneliness creeping in. Then you throw children into the mix, and it’s a whole new level of chaos.

Parents, if you find yourself suddenly at home with your laptop, your child(ren), and a calendar full of video meetings, take a deep breath and face the day with gusto. Here's five tips to help you maximise your productivity as a remote worker while also keeping your young ones happy (and quiet) during your workday.

1. Create a separate work space.

If your home is also your workplace, try and keep your work in a separate room. This will allow for a psychological, as well as a physical, division between your personal and work lives. This will also make it much easier for you to leave work “at work” at the end of the day so you can focus on your family.

If you’re not the primary caregiver on any given day and someone else is on hand playing that role, SHUT THE DOOR (if possible)! Retreat to your separate room and set up your remote office. Enjoy the distant hum of someone else attending to your children’s needs, and delight in the fact that you can simply pop in your earphones and get some quality work done!

2. Plan your day carefully.

If you know your children are going to be at home when you’re working, be realistic about what you can get done - and when. Plot each workday out in advance and stick to it. Otherwise, you might start to feel like you’re going to lose it with multiple deadlines looming.

If you share your childcare with a partner or a childcare provider, plan to do your best work when your children are being looked after or entertained out of sight. If you can schedule some downtime throughout the day to spend with your kiddies, all the better. You might just go back to work feeling refreshed, while your children may also feel happy enough to give you some quiet time to get your work done (maybe).

3. Schedule some time for yourself.

Working from home while trying to balance childcare and family time can be exhausting. Make sure you give yourself some time to unwind. Sometimes this may mean scheduling a free block of time on your calendar so you remember to follow through, but that’s ok—this mental break is crucial for your sanity.

Tip: Try to incorporate movement into your break to boost your energy and ward off the dreaded afternoon slump—do some yoga, walk the dog, or, better yet, play with the kids. They’ll love being with you, and you’ll feel better about focusing on work for the rest of the afternoon. As a bonus, perhaps they’ll be ready for a nap afterward!

4. Be upfront about your predicament.

No doubt many of you have been in the cringeworthy position of doing your best to conduct a work call with your little people wreaking havoc in the background. Some of you may have hit the next level of embarrassment—joining a video meeting only to have your children take the stage.

The best thing you can do in these situations is to be upfront and honest about your tricky predicament. You’ll find that most people on your call have also been there or will at least understand it’s not the easiest situation to be in. And as your son's or daughter's starts taking their crayons to your laptop screen while singing their ABCs at the top of their lungs, you might just find your rapport with colleagues or customers gets a little bit stronger. We’re all human, after all!

When all else fails and you feel like you’re really not going to have a constructive call, you can use a team messaging app, such as RingCentral, to let your colleagues know in real time that now is not the best time.

5. Be prepared for anything.

As you’re well aware, anything can happen when children are thrown into what should be a professional and organised setting. Whatever it is that keeps your children distracted, keep it on hand as an emergency back-up: a tablet loaded with your their favourite games (I know the parenting gods will not be happy, but needs must), cartoons paused on your TV, sticker books, and lots of (healthy) snacks. Preparation is key!

Of course, none of the above matters unless you have the right technology. Click here to learn more about how Ostratto makes business collaboration effortless using the fantastic technology available today.

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Written in collaboration with RingCentral.