Remote work has gained popularity in the recent past. Today, it is estimated that over four million people in the United States of America are currently working from home. This is approximately three percent of the entire American workforce.
This shows that remote work is now the mode of work preferred by both employers and their employees. Most employers are leaning towards remote work due to its ability to boost employee morale and productivity.
However, you need to come up with the right strategies to promote remote work among your employees. For instance, do you know how to get better IT support for the remote workforce? This is important since it keeps operations moving as required.
Here’s how;
Address Local Emergencies Physically
Even though we will talk about handling issues remotely below, you might be forced to send someone to physically meet with a remote worker who might be facing challenges with their workstation.
When this happens, it makes sense to send someone instead of having the employee come to your office. If this is challenging for you, then you can work with a local support company from the locality to ensure that your employees get better IT support.
You can handle this well by first checking the location of all your remote employees. After that, look at the best IT support companies in those localities and then sign a contract with them based on the services that they provide.
Facilitate Remote Support
When one of your remote workers is facing a technical problem, you should ensure that the issue is resolved as fast as possible. Sometimes, it might be challenging for your IT personnel to physically meet with the affected worker.
You can, therefore, outsource your IT services to ensure that all your workers get better IT support. If you have the resources, you can also set up an IT team in your location to handle all issues affecting your remote workers.
If you set up a team, ensure that you have set up effective communication channels such as online chats, emails, and phone calls. They should also be able to access the remote workers’ systems remotely to fix any issues.
Offer Round-the-Clock Support
Remote workers handle their tasks at their convenient times. Some of them might even work at night when your offices are already closed. If remote worker experiences a challenge such as a system crash, they might not be able to work.
This will end up affecting the operations of your company, something that might lead to losses. You, therefore, need to ensure that you have IT support that is available round the clock to address the requirements of your remote workers.
This is even more important for businesses with a distributed workforce. Such businesses have different remote employees working in different time zones, meaning that they have to be attended to when the need arises. 24/7 availability is very important.
Implement Modern Security Protocols
Working remotely is going to expose your business to many threats. If you look at modern cyber criminals, they are targeting companies with employees working from home because they understand that there is a loophole.
It is important to note that remote workers work anytime that they want to. This means that some of them might connect their systems with public or even unprotected networks. When this happens, your business data might be exposed.
You, therefore, should ensure that you have taken measures to let all remote workers understand the different security measures that they need to take. You should also implement modern security protocols and the use of a VPN for remote workers.
Provide End-to-End Support
The IT support team you choose to work with should not just address technical challenges and leave it at that. You need a support team that has the capability of providing an alternative solution to the affected remote workers.
For instance, if you have a remote worker whose system has crashed and is not able to work, your support team should be in a position to provide that worker with an alternative solution while they address the crash.
This means that the support team you are working with needs to be well equipped with software and hardware solutions in case of emergencies.
Remote work is here to stay. We are even going to see more companies and employees embracing remote work in the next few years. For you to be successful, you need to ensure that you have good IT support for your remote workforce.
