Though the Corona Virus is spreading around the world at an alarming rate, not just groups of people, but whole countries are coming together. This mobilization is a grand show of defiance. Worldwide, we’re saying loud and clear: this virus will not stop us and our livelihoods. With such strong will, there is always a way. And thus, the world’s biggest work from home experiment has begun.
How businesses adapt to this situation that changes on a daily basis remains to be seen. Which business will survive and thrive? Who will be left in the dust?
Many businesses are enacting, sometimes mandatory, work from home policies. Familiar big names are in the headlines for rapidly adapting to this changing model. They are pushing a majority of staff out of the office and back to their homes in order to slow down and prevent further spread. It’s a mass exodus of the office, the likes of which the world has never seen before.
Some workers may rejoice and celebrate, some may grumble, and others just get on with it. But as we move into this brave new world of work, how do we jointly ensure it’s a successful endeavor? It must start with confident leaders that are ready to lead the way, but at the same time knowing how to empathize, encourage and support staff in this tricky time.
However, we live in a hyperconnected world, and being a champion of the people (well, your staff at least) is simply not enough. It requires being a champion of digital, connectivity and change. It’s certainly a lot to ask, but not impossible. If your company is establishing remote working policies, D-Link recommends several things you should keep in mind in order to maintain productivity as your business switches many of its operations to be completed remotely.
Find the Right Tools to Stay Productive and Connected
A craftsman is nothing without his tools. Business leaders must choose the right ones for their now-decentralized team. But nowadays, remote collaboration tools are ten a penny. Choose the correct one that offers all the features you need to ensure your team can keep seamlessly collaborating. Consider questions such as do you need Instant Messaging? Video Chat? Ability to integrate with your current systems? What about the onboarding process?
Meanwhile, decentralizing the office can remove the social aspect of collaborative working for a lot of people. Just little things: hellos in the morning, lunch together, a brief coffee break in the afternoon. They help break the workday up into manageable chunks and are often cited as the reason for people wanting to come into the office rather working from home.
Maintaining face-to-face time is key, and it does not have to be 100% work related. Tsedal Neeley, Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
recommends during virtual meetings to try and maintain the human touch you would no longer expect to get through the screen, “because you no longer have water cooler conversations … spend the first six to seven minutes of a meeting checking in. Don’t go straight to your agenda items.” It can be easy to lose track of time, and who you are working with. But a brief couple of minutes of ‘how are you’ can keep a team gelled and familiar.
Build A Safe and Effective Foundation for Remote Digital Access
This sudden transition to remote working can blow many security vulnerabilities wide open. Sensitive data is being transferred over unsecure connections without a second thought. According to the 2019 Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report, despite a minor decrease in cost for security related incidents for small businesses, it has skyrocketed in medium and large businesses.
The average cost for a small business dropped from USD 29,000 in 2018 to USD 14,000 in 2019, but even then, can small businesses afford to fork out that much for lax security? Providing a secure connection to IT resources within the organization for off-site users is imperative to combat the risks associated with transferring confidential business data over unsecure connections. And that’s not to mention the growing fines being handed out as penalties for data breaches by governments worldwide.
A Closely Guarded Connection
Utilizing a VPN can provide secure access between remote users to critical IT resources. It creates a secure tunnel that extends from within your company across the Internet. This enables 24/7 secure access to central network resources from anywhere in the world without the need to dial into the office directly. Much like a firewall protects data on the office computers, VPNs are designed to protect it online. Data is encrypted as it travels through the VPN tunnel, ensuring secure access over public connections and safeguarding the data from unauthorized hacker sniffing.
When it comes to having the right equipment, a business VPN service is often the easy choice. They offer most features that a business would need, the main drawback though is pricing can quickly get out of hand. The more users, the more the subscription fee keeps growing. With the potential of long-term (or even permanent) work from home arrangements, a VPN router is a wiser choice. The DSR Series of Routers by D-Link are great pieces of kit that can help you establish a secure connection between remote users and the office.
Why Use a VPN Router
The DSR Series has some impressive features to facilitate the new work-from-home model. Whereas with a subscription, the price increases per user, routers do not require a subscription.
They are capable of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) VPN tunnels, as well as Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnels, empowering your mobile users by providing remote access to a central corporate database. This enables simultaneous support of many different users connecting to your central database.
Furthermore, they also can handle Split and Full Tunneling. Split Tunneling can intelligently divide business critical, needs-to-be-secure traffic from general traffic such as web browsing. This option is highly useful for protecting only the traffic that needs to be, thus reducing the load on the VPN router. This can avoid issues such as a user streaming video over the VPN connection, slowing down the whole network. With video traffic being transferred over a regular connection, it leaves plenty of bandwidth open for mission-critical functions, and maintaining a better experience for all other users.
Alternatively, Full Tunnel can transfer all traffic over the VPN connection, for the utmost security. This approach protects all traffic so businesses can maintain the same security policy regardless of traffic type, reducing any chance of vulnerability from remote employee access to the network. Either way, you can be rest assured that sensitive data is being kept under wraps.
How this worldwide experiment will play out remains to be seen. Could it be the death of the office? Probably not, but all industries should expect to see a shift in attitudes to decentralized working spaces. A VPN Router can be a serious solution to tackling the challenge of this shift. Be it temporary or long-term, during this time of difficulty, let’s keep getting things done efficiently and come out, heads up, on the other side.
“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!”
— Bilbo Baggins
