01 Dec Maintaining processes when remote working
Covid-19 has caused endless amounts of disruption to our daily lives, both personally and on a business level. For the majority of businesses, it has been necessary to make a hasty transition to remote working in order to keep trading. Most have made this transition successfully, 52.6% of employees surveyed said they would like to work from home permanently if they had the choice post lockdown¹. The figures point to employees feeling safer at home, along with enhanced flexibility and reduced travelling costs makes remote working the inevitable choice for employees.
Despite the positive uptake, remote working can be difficult to adjust to with the work-life balance being fragile to maintain, constant communication with teammates can also be challenging both of which are detrimental to productivity and an effective remote working set up.
Reduced productivity and collaboration are a problem when out of the workplace as the environment inadvertently offers structure and a rhythm for work, which can be hard to replicate when working at home. Technology can provide this missing structure and assist in assuring that you avoid inadvertent mal process.
Microsoft 365 is a key tool to help you get the most from your remote working. It offers a platform to ensure you maintain work processes and, in some cases, will help you evolve those processes making them more efficient and productive going into the future post-Covid-19.
Microsoft 365
Businesses of all sizes rely on Microsoft 365 to assist in the daily running of their business, this can range from key tasks to the mundane. Microsoft 365 is a tool designed for productivity, offering access to a full range of applications on multiple devices providing a solution for a variety of collaborative and solo tasks.
The tools in Microsoft 365 all work in harmony integrating seamlessly with one another. The different tools in the ecosystem are designed to cover all bases and complement each other in achieving best practice in general organisation, collaboration, and connectivity.
The Microsoft ecosystem
The Microsoft ecosystem is designed in such a way that maintaining process is inevitable, like a well-oiled machine, every part compliments another part that complements another and so on. This creates a chain of features all integral to the running of the successful ecosystem.
All applications in the Productivity column run alongside and function with the Dynamics and Business Apps column, allowing for remote workers to still be in contact with the necessary expertise from other departments. It also puts them in contact with the important documentation, a secure environment, and the connectivity tools to perform their work process to the best of their ability.
Microsoft Teams – the remote working front runner
Teams, with its 115 million daily active users², is the go-to productivity and collaboration platform. Teams offers:
- Chat – The chat feature offers a place for employees to converse amongst themselves about any topics, used typically in place of what otherwise would be a verbal conversation in the office. Beyond day-to-day chatter, the function allows you to maintain the company image and camaraderie between staff keeping a certain level of social normality by offering that ‘tea break banter’ that would otherwise be lost to the remote working environment. Chat also permits users the ability to voice and video call one another individually or as a group.
- File sharing – You can share files amongst colleagues with ease, mirroring the office setting.
- Channels – Channels allows you to ‘cherry-pick’ sectors of your business and create an Individual line of communication for employees from that sector; for example, the marketing team may have their own channel as the employees in accounts do not need to know what new campaigns are being discussed.
- Video Meetings – Schedule voice/video conferences and check the availability with your team’s schedules making booking meetings an easier process. With up to 250 people in a meeting at one time, there is no reason for anyone to be out of the loop when in a remote work setting.
- Calendar – Organise your own and your staff calendars on the go with ease. Staff can no longer make the excuse that they did not know an appointment was happening at a certain time or date.
Teams was described as a “digital translation of an open office space” ³, it allows you to utilise remote working to its full potential meaning your team can evolve whilst maintaining work processes that have seen your company be successful.
How can we help?
Here at VaraTech, we offer a broad range of IT support and consultancy services that aim to help small businesses extract maximum value from their IT. From proactive network monitoring/maintenance and hardware leasing to Cloud services, VoIP telephony and much more, we help our clients identify and roll-out the best-fit solutions for their businesses.
We’re cloud computing experts! We can help your business leverage the potential of some of the most empowering Cloud services, such as Microsoft 365. Why not get in touch today, to discover how the flexibility, scalability cost-efficiency, convenience and security of Cloud services can help your business realise its potential.