How To Manage Remote Employees and Boost Productivity?

 Remote work comes with a lot of benefits like easy access to talent, lower costs, and increased productivity. However, migrating full time workers to more time at home has lots of disadvantages, too. And one of them is relationship decay.

Relationships connect people in workplaces. Without them, businesses will just be filled with ergo chairs and old laptops. Working from a distance is not the only barrier to forming relationships with others.

As your employees transition to remote work Florence SC at co-working spaces and in cafes, and less time close to each other, the social fabric of their work will weaken. Email, slack, and video meetings become more efficient, but if they are the main or the only way your workers interact with others – your staff will lose out on those moments when they get to know each other on a more personal level.

In case leaders do not deal with this relationship decay, this could lead to a backlash that would erode a work revolution not only your employees but your company and the whole economy, too.

Why should you care about building work relationships? Collaboration between your employees needs more than just data transfer. When Google launched Project Aristotle, researchers found out that trust was the special ingredient that’s common across high performing teams. Emotional awareness and trust won’t be possible if you don’t really know who your co-workers are.

 

 

To improve relationships, here are a few things that leaders, managers, and employees can do when redesigning the remote team dynamics.

1. Begin with a personal check-in

During virtual meetings, you can create a personal connection by asking others how their weekend was at the beginning of the meeting.

2. Use Your Camera

In order to communicate better, humans depend on nonverbal communication. It’s better to turn on the camera so that you and your employees don’t miss any information during the conversation.

3. Non-work Related Video Chat

Video chats are not exclusive for projects or clients. You can also have video chats even if it’s not work related. Leaders aren’t the only ones who can start this. All employees should be encouraged to create opportunities to connect with others.

4. Set The Rules

Establish how you want things to be done right from the very beginning. You also need to know what your employees’ preferred communication style is as well as the best productivity windows. Cybersecurity experts also suggest setting rules on what should be avoided when working from home.

5. Make Everybody Remote

It’s very easy to forget in meetings when almost everyone are in the room that somebody has dialed in. Consider adding a version wherein if one member is remote then all the others must be remote, too.

6. Replicate the Features of Working Together

It’s best if you can recreate situation awareness among all your remote teams. Products such as Remo.co and Sococo can make an office map that shows who’s in when they are available.

7. Real Presence Should Be A Priority

Lastly, make it a point for everyone to meet in person every once in a while. Gatherings can never be replaced by video conferencing.

 

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and let our team of IT experts ensure cybersecurity as your workers transition to remote work.

 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Florence, SC 29501
843-396-8762
http://manageditservicesflorence.com

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

3 Cybersecurity Risks Of Remote Work

The numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that about 29% of Americans worked from home before the coronavirus outbreak. Meanwhile, Buffer said 99% of workers prefer remote work for at least part of their time or if possible, for the rest of their careers.

These days, employees don’t have any other choice but to work from home. They, along with their employers are beginning to see the many different complications involved in remote work Florence SC. There are other bigger challenges than just feeling lonely and less productive. Remote work can put a business at risk. Although some businesses have already invested in good network and cybersecurity solutions, a lot of firms are still unaware of the risks involved in working remotely.

Organizations of all sizes and kinds are dealing with an increase in endpoint security gaps, email based threats, as well as other issues due to the immediate switch to a fully remote workforce. Therefore, it is not crucial to consider both ethical hacker perspectives and security practitioner to remain secure, that is what all of this is about.

4 Signs of Cybersecurity Breach

• New programs appear even if you didn’t install them.
• The computer runs unusually slow.
• Weird popups appear.
• Loss of control of the keyboard or mouse.

If you notice any of these signs, be sure to inform your company’s IT experts so they could mitigate the risk right away.

3 Hazards and Concerns of Remote Work

Home Wi-Fi Security

Compared to working at the office, where IT managers can easily control and monitor the security of each Wi-Fi network, your home network most likely have weaker protocols.  For example, you probably have WEP instead of WPA-2. This lets hackers access the traffic of your network easily.

Phishing Scams

Phishing scams are one of the primary causes of data breaches. Cybercriminals could easily send deceptive emails that look like the real thing. When one of your employees click on the malicious link, the hacker will get access the device of the employer.

Weak Passwords

Hackers can easily crack simple passwords. If you use insecure passwords across different platforms, hackers will easily get unauthorized access to different accounts in a short span of time.

The situation brought about by COVID-19 has triggered a transformation. Remote work brings a new set of challenges and risks. Hackers are prepared for that.

Since remote work is mostly mandatory, businesses should make sure that every device is secure. Employers must discard hardware that are hardware based legacy VPNs and choose cloud agnostic as well as scalable network security options.

Legacy VPNs may leave gaps in your remote security efforts because they are difficult to configure and deploy. Furthermore, they do not have the ability to secure remote access that are policy based to on-premise resources, business applications, and hybrid cloud environments.

Virtual training is also another key element. Companies must perform virtual training for all their team members so that they would be educated on how to deal with a cyber attack and what risks they need to watch out for like malware, suspicious emails, and etc.

SpertanTec Inc. has partnered with Fortinet – the world’s foremost provider of network security – to bring your business the security you need. FortiGate 4400F is the world’s first hyperscale firewall delivers unparalleled performance, scalability and security to help meet escalating business needs.

Call us today at 843-396-8762 for a no obligation review of you network. We works with companies of any size.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Florence, SC 29501
843-396-8762
http://manageditservicesflorence.com


Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

Parent’s Guide To Remote Work

Companies of all sizes in different parts of the world are starting to adopt remote work at a faster rate. A recent survey revealed that 68% of workers across the globe worked remotely once a month, at least. Remote work has several positive effects for companies such as boarder applicant pools that do not rely on location and lower overhead costs.

A lot of parents have joined the work from home bandwagon because of its flexibility as well as the opportunity to spend more time with their family. Waking up and eating breakfast together with family is a rare benefit for parents who have been dreaming of work life balance.

If you are a parent and you are thinking of a remote job, it’s very easy to imagine the many benefits of working at home. However, you also have to keep in mind that it’s not all lollipops and rainbows. While it is great to cut back on the commute and be with your children more than when you were spending more than eight hours in the office, work from home, work from home also has its concerns that you need to be prepared for if you want remain sane.

Be Emotionally Prepared

You may think that moving to remote work won’t be a roller coaster ride, but it could actually stir a lot of emotion that could blow up if you are not prepared and careful.

What typically happens to many parents who decide to work from home is the lines between home and work life, which used to marked clearly, suddenly becomes blurry for everybody. Where kids used to think of dad and mom being home as family time, now the house is where they are working and outings or playtimes need to wait for a scheduled time.

One good way of mitigating this is to create a time and space boundaries with your children. If they are told that you are at work when you are in the office, your kids will know that you are not yet available for playtime.

Create A Morning Routine

Going straight from the bedroom to your home office without changing out of your pajamas may be a dream for everyone, but unless you have already trained your brain that you have to work right away, you will realize that it’s quite hard to complete anything.

Add your children’s hustle and bustle, especially if they are in the hands on stage, plus the family foot traffic that you’ll hear inside the house, then you will find yourself dealing with a productivity problem. So, you better have a daily routine.

Create A Workflow

You need to have a dedicated space that is meant only for you when you are working. It must be a closed off space that has a door and a lock. Then you should set ground rules as to how other people in your house could get in touch with you during the day. You should ask your nanny or your spouse to text you if they need something. This will allow you to respond appropriately without having to disrupt your work. You should also create a method of how you can get things done. You can try out the Pomodoro technique.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. if you need professional help in setting up IT security measures to help protect you from online threats as you work from home.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Florence, SC 29501
843-396-8762
http://manageditservicesflorence.com