Coleman Technologies Blog

For Much of History People Worked From Home

In medieval times people predominantly worked at their place of residence. Many people of this era in Europe lived in what are known now as longhouses. They lived a subsistence life, looking after their crops and livestock. Individuals that lived in these communal buildings typically found a way to justify their inclusion by gaining a trade that would help the rest of the people out. In fact, it wasn’t until the mid-18th century where people started going outside their immediate community to go to work; and even then, the people that ran the factories lived and operated out of small buildings adjacent to the main factory.

Office Work In the 20th Century

As industrialization took hold, there was demand for clerical workers and salesmen that necessitated building an office. Inventions such as electric motors, telegraphy (and eventually telephony), and the typewriter facilitated a major change for business. 

Only a few decades later, much of the job market was represented by clerical work. The workers that still worked in production were made to hold fast to management's new standards for productivity. The standard that kept increasing. Managers of the time began to keep detailed figures of how long a task should take. According to a productivity field guide from 1960, swiveling in your seat should have taken .009 minutes. At this juncture, the cubicle was invented, bringing unparalleled distraction prevention to the modern office.

Technology Helped Encourage Remote Practices

As computing became more commonplace, so did remote working. Factories, the base for the 20th century American economy, started to close as the price of labor started to be prohibitive for business. Service jobs filled the gap and a new level of productivity was established. Major innovations such as the personal computer, home Internet service, and ultimately cloud computing have expanded the availability for a worker to have access to everything he/she needs from anywhere.

What better place than home?

Remote work had been growing pretty rapidly as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. In mid-May, 66 percent of people that could work from home, were working from home. That number is sure to go down as businesses reopen, but it may be that enough has been learned from this situation that employers will offer more flexibility to their staff than they had previously.

Remote work can provide your business some serious benefits. To talk to our professional consultants, call Coleman Technologies today at (604) 513-9428.

Figure Out Where and How You Work Most Effectively

As you work from home, it will help to establish one area of your living space as the area where work is to be done and commit to working there. Pick a spot that isn’t going to serve as an additional distraction (as the snacks of the kitchen and the temptation of a nap in the bedroom would serve) and claim that area as your productive workspace. Make sure that you have all the tools that you will need for your work in that area—from a laptop, an additional monitor, and any other peripherals that you will need for your tasks.

Once your workspace is settled, you need to settle how your day will be arranged. Unless the workflows of the office need to be maintained, try rearranging your schedule around personal duties. As long as the work is done on time, there’s no harm in giving your remote team a bit of freedom as you can.

Don’t Overwork

While work responsibilities may seem like a welcome escape for many from today’s stresses, you need to be sure that you are appropriately taking breaks and working the appropriate number of hours. Fatigue and burnout are just as big of an issue at home as they are in the office, so allowing yourself to step away on occasion is important to do, even as you work remotely. In fact, stepping away has been shown to inspire new ideas and progress, as well as improve overall physical health.

This means that you also must set a few firm boundaries. By requesting not to be disturbed during work hours, one can accomplish much more in the time allotted to them. As a result, the prospect of stopping at the end of the workday—another firm necessity—seems to be more manageable.

Make Sure You Have the Tools You Need

Sure, we may have already started discussing the hardware that one will need while working from home, but there are a lot of other aspects to consider. For instance, the software solutions that your team will need must be available to them as well. There are a few methods to doing so that you may choose from. You could have your team remote into your business’ network to access the software and data they will need, or you could make use of cloud solutions to effectively accomplish the same result.

Your team communication will become even more crucial than it currently is, so your team will also need the tools and resources available to collaborate with one another. Email works for certain things, of course, but should always be supplemented by an internal instant messaging platform and other tools to keep everyone on the same foot, like a project management system.

Remote operations will help you keep your business running and your team healthy, two incredibly important considerations for the near future. To learn more about the solutions that remote operations will require, or to start putting them in place, reach out to Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428 today.

Security Considerations

Even though you aren’t in the office, you still need to follow the same security protocols and the processes you would need to follow if you were working in the office. In fact, these processes become even more important, as your home network is likely less secure than the one in the workplace. Here are some tips:

Be Hygienic
We aren’t telling you to brush your teeth or wash behind your ears, we are talking about practicing good security hygiene while you work remotely. Don’t reuse your passwords, use multi-factor (or two-factor) authentication to secure all accounts, and don’t share out information over email if you don’t know for certain who will read it. In other words, all the basics still apply.

Be Mindful
For similar reasons, you also need to be extra careful of online scams or phishing attacks while working remotely. Lost business data is lost business data, regardless of where you were when it was left vulnerable. Make sure you are up-to-speed in terms of identifying and mitigating breach attempts.

Use a VPN
Finally, because you will not be protected by the defenses on the company network, you need to implement a few extras, such as a virtual private network. A VPN uses encryption to conceal the contents of any data you transmit over the Internet, protecting the contents from virtually all attacks.

Business Practices

Again, as you aren’t in the office, your remote work needs to follow the same processes as it would if you were in-house, and you will need to be more deliberate about carrying them out. For instance:

Use Communication and Collaboration
Since you are not working alongside your colleagues and coworkers while you are working from home, you should be extra diligent about remaining in contact with them. Use your email, instant messaging, and phone capabilities to keep the rest of the team apprised as you progress with your tasks.

Follow Processes
As we don’t want anything falling through the cracks as we continue our operations, it is important that each team member sticks to procedures with every task they touch. This will help ensure that all the ‘i’s are dotted and each ‘t’ is crossed, and that things progress productively.

Schedule Strategically
While you should still work the amount of time you would be in the office, you may have a little more freedom and autonomy as far as your schedule is concerned. Don’t be afraid to arrange your tasks around any scheduling conflicts you may have, or shuffle your tasks to better fit your productivity levels throughout the day.

Personal Wellness

Finally, it is crucial that you are able to manage yourself and your time while not in the office environment. Here are a few tips to help you do so, that may be useful to keep in mind.

Set Limits
While the assumption surrounding remote work is that employees are prone to slacking off, it is also likely that you may be tempted to push yourself a little further than you should with your day to try and accomplish as much as possible. While this is an admirable goal, it isn’t effective if you overwork yourself one day and accomplish almost nothing the next as a result. Moderate yourself and stop when it’s time.

Build Patterns
Process is crucial to working effectively from home. This means you need to actively make sure you get into a work routine (even one that resembles the one you follow normally). Get up on time. Make yourself breakfast. Make sure you get dressed (at least most days). Establish a place that becomes your work area. Consistency will help keep you on task and feeling sharp.

Resist Temptation
There are a lot of things at home to help distract you from doing what you need to do. Hobbies, that TV show that you always meant to watch, even household chores can tempt you away from getting down to business. Shut these excuses to procrastinate out, and if you must procrastinate, do so in a beneficial way. Meditating can help you refocus, or even switching to another task briefly can help you refresh your mind.

Remember, your team is here to support you, but they also need that support to be reciprocated. Make sure your remote work is just as productive as your in-house work would be.

With many “non-essential” businesses scrambling to find strategies that will keep revenue coming through the door, setting up a remote workforce has become most businesses' best hope. Unfortunately, with such little notice to dot the Is and cross the Ts, businesses are taking on more risk than many of them are comfortable with. That trepidation is not fruitless, either. In times of crisis, hackers have a tendency to prey on the unprepared. The fact is that workers that are operating where they are not comfortable--or where they’re too comfortable--can mean disaster for their employers.

Security Threats for Remote Workers

Even if it normally is, security isn’t exactly the top priority for businesses faced with this situation. Businesses need to mitigate net-negative cash flow positions. This means they need their staff to continue working. This is stretching business’ cybersecurity strategies thin. Exacerbating things is that with so many people focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, hackers can use it as bait. 

Cybersecurity professionals and other researchers have seen an increase in ransomware attacks, trojans, and spyware as a result of this situation. They’ve also seen COVID-19 being referenced in millions of phishing attacks. Many problems that businesses face in regards to cybersecurity can be directly attributed to the remote worker. Workers at home are typically using their home PC or laptop that has all their personal accounts on it. An infected personal PC is a big problem when you are using the same PC to access work related materials. 

Additionally, hackers are now seeing a lot more success by targeting businesses directly now that security is playing second fiddle.

That is a problem since cyberattacks can decimate your business, tarnish your reputation, and end any positive momentum your business has built up. Since most businesses weren’t prepared in the least for these stay-at-home orders, the ones that are under direct scrutiny from federal, state, and industry mandates are even more exposed.

How to Protect Your Business

While any measures you take at this point to better secure your employees working remotely will be more reactive than they are proactive, it is still important to do so. We suggest that you enact the following measures to begin:

• Cloud solutions - Rather than introducing an entrance into your business with a remote access solution, using the cloud’s capabilities enables productivity through a much simpler and more secure means than opening a gateway into your business’ infrastructure. As the cloud permits you to store your data and/or host your applications, your employees can be sure to have the resources they need to safely work from home.
  
  
• Company devices - If you provide your team with the device they should use through their day-to-day, your business can continue to operate with the knowledge that all updates and security patches can be maintained. Despite the upfront costs of procuring the technology you will need, making this investment can provide returns to both productivity and security.
  
  
• Employee training - Perhaps most crucially, your employees need to respect how much responsibility will rest on their shoulders in terms of maintaining cybersecurity as they work from home. Making sure they know the recommended best practices for maintaining security, as well as other preventative skills like spotting phishing attacks, will allow you to trust them more to keep your business safe from threats.

While the COVID-19 pandemic will eventually end, smart security practices both in and out of the office never should. To learn more about how we can help keep your business safe, reach out to Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428.