Essential 9 Remote Working Methodology Questions?

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70% of people worldwide work remotely at least once per week, with more business’ creating full-time remote employees to reduce issues around location, travel and capturing experience. It’s an ever-growing trend within businesses and the numbers are forecasted to continue to rise. In part advances in technology have facilitated the number of remote workers.

Remote working offers many benefits to employers and employees but it also comes with extra security issues you need to be aware of.

We have highlighted nine remote working security questions that we must ask ourselves and we at Focus consider essential to any company with remote workers or thinking of changing their strategy.

What are the core benefits of remote working?

Firstly this article is not meant to scare you off remote working. Instead, the aim is to make you aware of the security concerns you will face with remote working. That’s why we will quickly cover some of the benefits that remote working offers.

Remote working options can:

  • Reduce company overhead costs by reducing or removing the need for office space and equipment.
  • Improve employee retention and productivity.
  • Increase your employee options. By not being tied to one location your employment search can go further.
  • Eliminate the daily commute, reducing emissions and your carbon footprint.

1. Will Remote working change productivity?

Working from home can get a bad reputation. It stems from the idea that given the freedom to work from home, employees will skive. In actual fact, for the best part, the reverse is true and it’s pleasing to see the stats that prove the opposite. 

Reduced commuting time – Commuting for most is another stress and it takes up time that often with home works is spent being more productive. 

Fewer sick days – Flexible working helps employees who have a family or other obligations to meet. The fact is, employees are less likely to be absent from work on a regular basis if flexible working is offered.

Parents especially benefit from flexibility around working from home. In a survey by Flexjobs, 84% of parents say that flexible working is the most important factor they look at when considering a job.

Fewer distractions – Offices can be incredibly distracting places. Working from home means workers don’t have to face colleagues dropping by their desk for a chatnor deal with office noise and general interruptions. The absence of office distractions means workers can get their heads down and get the work done.

KPI’s – Managing remote works often becomes a different structure. The successful companies change most core KPI’s to results-based and not activity-based. This way it changes your leading structure to “was the target hit” rather than “are they working at x time” or “how many hours have they worked today”.

2. Do we introduce flexible working times?

People operate more efficiently at various times of the day. Some employees will have a productive drive in the morning once the kids are packed off to school, whilst others will perform better after lunch.

Given home workers have targets to meet, encourage your employees to best utilise the times of day when they are most driven and free from distraction. During these times they should also indicate they do not want to be disturbed by colleagues. Creating a “deep work” signal provides an ideal solution. This could be as simple as an automatic response detailing the set hours you process your inbox.

3. We have issues attracting the best talent in our area?

Businesses won’t necessarily find the best talent on their doorstep. Employers are able to geographically widen the search for talent if they offer flexible work patterns and allow staff to work from home. This means businesses can always employee people with the most expertise at the best cost to the business, due to an attractive remote working flexible package. It’s not just salary that attracts top talent. Businesses seeking the best employees will need to consider their list of perks. Flexible working is one of the things employees are looking out for.

4. How does this reduce our operating costs? 

If you allow your staff to work remotely, you’ll naturally need less office space to accommodate them and so directly reducing the square footage and service-related costs.

And the proof’s in the pudding: figures from Global Workplace Analytics revealed if bosses in America allowed their staff to work remotely just half the time, they would save an average of $11,000 a year per employee.

5. How do we secure our data with remote access?  

The first questions are, what do these resources require to do there job and be productive for you and your clients? Then how do they communicate with others within your internal teams? It is now a common best security and business best practice to only give access and permissions in this way, and not give 100% access, as this exposures the whole business to security risks.

Depending on the access required and the design of the environment you can apply lots of different secure methods to enable your workforce while keeping them communicating together.

Strong best-practice password policy and environment setup across all applications and points of entry, backed up by 2FA/MFA (two-factor authentication, which gives a second unknown changing element to the password) is a must before enabling remote working. As an open entry point to your data often opens this to the reset of the cybercriminal world.

6. Do we need to do any extra Security Traning? 

First, you will need to create security guidelines for your staff to follow. However, that alone is not enough. It is important to then train your employees on security best practices.

88 per cent of UK data breaches are caused by human error so your employees play a massive role in cybersecurity. Taking the time to educate your staff can often be your biggest cybersecurity win.

7. How do we effectively communicate with remote workers? 

First, you need to ensure you enable regular, constructive touchpoint meetings with individuals and teams. These can look like: Weekly team huddles, Monthly One 2 Ones and quarterly all together town hall meetings (at a hired central or fare location(s).

A well-structured cloud phone system with softphones and collaboration applications which include IM (instant messaging) will allow good practice communication (especially for millennials). Using a complete package encourages manage usage from the whole team while keeping all communications within your control, secure and audited. Ensuring maximum uptime and effective support packages of the complete package is key to insure 100% utilisation and success within the twenty-first business.

Utilising data storage methods that enable collaboration, easy sharing and online collaborated editing will empower your users to work together on shared data/documents, but again keep this within your control. Microsoft Office 365 is already the number one choice for most business in the twenty-first century, but most are still not utilising the service 100% and so are not taking advantage of the MS O365 Cloud functions to enable their business.

8. How do we effectively manage and support the IT equipment at their remote location?

Keeping devices and applications updated is not just about getting the latest features. The majority of the time they are used to fix stability and security vulnerabilities or make improvements to the security of an application. the key to this is to regularly update applications and the devices they are being used within a proactive monitored system.

Users will also from time to time require remote hands assistance from a support angle. The tools used to create this remote session most be managed and updated, as old versions of this software can create high-risk security risks. If these applications are compromised then the attacker can gain full remote access (even behind the scenes access, without you being aware) with full admin access, and so compromise you date/environment.

Creating a partnership with outsourced IT support that is built on remote working methodologies and so they understand the positives and risks means they have defined the IT Support services to support this. 

9. Do we need to consider monitoring software?

Keeping track of remote workers can be a thorny topic. Monitoring software can be regarded as a surveillance tool but can be used to provide benefits to staff. For example, if you offer overtime on certain projects, recording how much time remote workers spend on certain tasks and the activities they perform can help to calculate wages accurately and address any potential training issues.


In Summary

Remote working is more than just having your employees log in from home. Connecting to your network or accessing your data from outside of your office opens up lots of positive impacts to your business but also creates new security risks you will need to address.

For help with setting up remote working methodology for your business, or if you are already using remote working and want to check your security get in touch to see how we can help.

You can contact us here, email hello@focustechs.co.uk or call us on 01942 555555.

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