Gearing Up Your Employees to Work From Home
Identify the applications you use that are premise-based and which are in the cloud. Many older applications such as your accounts, production and HR systems may actually be hiding on a server in a closet. Contact those vendors and find out what they offer for remote connectivity. Or, assuming that the worker’s computer is left on at the office, there are several remote access tools, when combined with a VPN, that can be used to access their desktops and premise-based applications. Whatever method you choose, test it thoroughly before you need it.
With the possible exception of calls to your sales team, most of your telephone traffic probably comes in via your desktop phone system. If you have a modern IP-based phone system, your employees can quite literally unplug their desk sets and plug them back in at home; nothing will change. There may also be an app available for their cell phones.
If your phone system is older, you may still have the option to forward calls to another phone number such as a mobile or home phone.
Finally, consider distributing headsets, if employees don’t already have them, as they will likely be spending much more time on conference calls.
Most of us use messaging as part of social media, but as a small company you are likely not using it unless you have multiple sites or existing telecommuters. The best thing about messaging when working remotely is presence; your co-workers will know when you are at your desk and when you are not. This is also handy for managers. Most tools also have built in desktop sharing for collaboration and video.
Consider adopting tools that your employees are already using such as WhatsApp or Skype. These tools work great and they are free. Your CRM maybe another choice. The advantage of it will be that conversations will be stored on the customer, opportunity or service ticket record.
Your sales team is probably quite good about keeping customer contact data up to date in your CRM. It may be time however to reinforce the importance of contribution from all your customer facing teams. If a customer makes contact, it should be logged and tasks assigned if needed.
You and your team are probably already using either Google OfficeSuite or Microsoft 365. Both offer very strong cloud-based document management that allow collaboration in the form of Google Docs and SharePoint. If you aren’t using them, at minimum set up a departmental file structure and encourage employees to move their work docs over to them.
If your company shuffles around a lot of paper, this is the time to implement scanning.
Consider sending a worker from each department home to work for a week to test your remote infrastructure. They should be able to be just as productive at home as at work. If they are used to using desktop versions of office, they will learn to use the online versions as well as perhaps unfamiliar tools such as VPNs, remote desktop phone apps etc.
With a little bit of planning and little cost, your company can be prepared to handle an office closure whatever the reason. Your employees will remain productive and engaged and your customers amazed at your foresight. The key is in looking at your existing and new infrastructure requirements department by department and testing everything to make sure it works.
Let me know what you are doing to prepare for your employees to work from home at glennh@sparkstone.co.uk. Explore more about improving customer experience, what's coming in GDPR and key ways to encourage CRM adoption in our further blog posts below.
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