Coleman Technologies Blog

A Look at the Numbers

Before the pandemic hit, it was believed that roughly 5.2 percent of Americans worked out of their home. That’s about 8 million people, and that number is fairly recent, from 2017. By the end of 2019, we can estimate it was maybe between 5.5 percent to 6 percent.

We can simplify this and say one out of every 20 American workers worked from home before the pandemic.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only a mere 29% of Americans can actually work from home. That takes into consideration jobs that simply require a person to be at the workplace, like many in the food industry, delivery, construction and many more.

At the time of writing this, I have yet to find solid statistics for the number of Americans working from home right now, but there is a general consensus that it’s somewhere around one in five to one in three. 

That falls right in line with what the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows, and we’re talking about the whole of the United States - things are going to feel different in different states and different areas.

How is the Internet Holding Up?

Back on topic, up to a third of all workers are now doing their jobs from home, plus kids of all ages are taking classes and doing their homework online, on top of the normal traffic that we see everyday. I’m talking about Netflix and other streaming services, online video games, YouTube and social media; all of these services are seeing a huge swing in traffic as more people are stuck at home.

Netflix’s usage, which is normally about 15% of all global Internet traffic, has hit all-time highs, and ISPs are seeing record-breaking amounts of Internet traffic all in all. Thankfully, many ISPs and mobile carriers have loosened or temporarily lifted data caps that would have otherwise caused massive expenses for users trying to work from home (Interestingly, these data caps were supposedly in place to ensure the service functions well. It turns out that in general, the service can still work as intended without them. Let’s hope service providers don’t revert back to the old ways after all this is over).

All that said, it’s not perfect for everyone. Rural users with limited access to broadband are still struggling, and in larger, more populated areas where the infrastructure might be a little older have been bumping into frustrating downtime. Still, all in all, a large part of our workforce is able to get things done effectively while maintaining quarantine, and that’s huge.

Cybersecurity is More Important Than Ever

Here’s the thing; being able to stay in business and keep your customers happy and your employees safe during this trying time is a big deal. That said, you can’t do all of that without also understanding the additional risks you might be opening up to. This isn’t meant to sound like doom and gloom - I want businesses to survive and strive. I want to hear success stories. I want business owners coming out of this with a new perspective on how they operate their business, trust their employees, and bolster their bottom line.

This could be a renaissance for the modern office, shifting the paradigm to normalize a remote workforce. Suddenly, you have fewer expenses, happier employees, and everyone can wear comfy pants more often. Or, maybe we’ll all decide we miss working together in the office so much and never look back. Either way, I digress...

Your business might not be able to see how this all turns out if you don’t secure all those new endpoints. Everyone who is working from home on a personal device just opened up a new weakness in your IT’s armor, especially if you aren’t providing the proper means of accessing company data and applications.

Ensuring that your users are able to work securely is going to be critical, because the last thing you need to deal with is additional downtime or data breaches.

Coleman Technologies can help review your needs and provide the right solutions to ensure your remote workforce can effectively do their jobs without risking your data. If you need help or advice, give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to get started.

The reliance on remote workers has grown exponentially over the past couple of years, and presents businesses some stark challenges as well as some amazing opportunities. As a result, a lot of businesses have tried to find middle ground and started implementing a hybrid approach to their workforce. Let’s take a look at what hybrid work entails and how it can benefit your organization.

Let’s Start from the Beginning

Remote work was growing slowly for years, but as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and government mandates were levied, a lot of businesses moved to remote work to try and sustain their operations. A lot of businesses did so reluctantly, with many more just choosing to shutter their business rather than take the risk. The organizations that did embrace the strategy still considered it a short-term solution to a major medical disaster. 

As the pandemic carried on, however, many businesses realized that it wasn’t going to be so simple for them to simply recall their workforce as many workers started looking for remote only work. For workers, it was everything that they thought they wanted, but they too were confronted with challenges. Sure, they eliminated the commute and the long hours at the office, but they then had to navigate the same expectations while working from the same place that they used to spend time unwinding from that same activity. 

As the threats of the pandemic wound down, a lot of companies wasted no time recalling their staff. This ended up backfiring for a lot of organizations as there were enough remote jobs available that paid competitive wages that lots of people quit their in-person jobs to continue to work remotely. This is now known as the Great Resignation. While some of this was just older workers taking early retirement, most of the people who quit did so to avoid going back to the grind.

A New Strategy

While many people quit due to employer demands, many people didn’t. They returned to the office, but were soon longing for the flexibility they had while working from home. This saw unprecedented losses of productivity and employers had to come up with another strategy to keep their workforce happy and effective. 

You see, business owners and employees both had ideas on how to make this work. For the business owners, they had invested in real estate, resources, and company culture to help their workers feel more at home in the office. A comfortable employee is a productive employee, after all; and employees immediately thought, “What’s more comfortable than being at home?”

This resulted in the hybrid compromise. Workers felt like they were much more productive working from home, but employers pointed out that their productivity isn’t as sustained as it is in the office. If somehow a business can leverage both strategies, they could get back on track. This is the hybrid approach. Effectively, employees are asked to come into the office a couple of days a week and work from home the others. Now it is quickly becoming standard operating procedure for businesses all over the world. 

The Hybrid Approach

If you are looking for a way to get the most out of your workers, going to a hybrid workplace is a great way to do it. It not only gives you (and your staff) the face time needed to promote a dedicated company culture, it also gives your staff the flexibility they need to not have to grind through every workday. 

Unfortunately, there are some considerations that have to be made to make this strategy work. Firstly, you have to understand that some of the biggest achievers you have in your business aren’t going to want to spend hours in your office in virtual meetings. This will just serve to push them away, so if you choose to implement this hybrid approach, consider these two factors:

Maintain Flexibility

You’ve spent a lot of time and effort on your company’s policy and procedure generation and a change to a hybrid workplace makes these obsolete. You need to pay attention to how your individual employees operate and manage them accordingly. After all, it is much easier to be more attentive to someone you trust’s needs than to find someone new. 

Make Sure People are Connected

One of the biggest problems with remote-only work is the tendency for people to get left behind. In order to make a hybrid system work you need to give your team the communications and collaboration tools they need to make your business a success. By making efforts to keep people connected, you can build relationships that will do nothing but benefit your business. 

The hybrid workplace also relies on technology and the experts at Coleman Technologies can help. If you would like to learn more about how to get a hybrid workplace up and running, give us a call today at (604) 513-9428.