Coleman Technologies Blog

Mobile Device Use

When working from home, the reasonable threshold for mobile device use is significantly different. Theoretically, you could talk to someone on speakerphone with the phone across the room (although you shouldn’t). However, there are other people with you in the office that you could potentially distract.

Take a moment and remind your team of this. Instead of holding long conversations at their desk, make sure they try to keep their calls brief and that they do whatever they can to avoid disturbing others—including leaving the area, if necessary.

Instant Messaging Use

Again, we have the kind of situation where the standards in the office are much different than those for a remote worker. When working remotely, your team needs to be able to communicate and should do so in both a professional and social manner. This is not so much the case in the office.

Allow me to clarify. When a team is working remotely, some socialization via instant messaging can be considered appropriate, so long as it is not interfering with the workday’s processes. This is simply because they are working remotely and can’t socialize with one another face-to-face. In the office, your team can—and almost certainly will—socialize throughout the day amongst themselves. Again, if done in moderation this encourages cooperation, but it can become a hindrance to your productivity if it goes too far. There is also the risk that if your messaging solution is used too much as a stand-up special your team will be less likely to read the important messages that are shared.

Moderation is key, so make sure your team is aware of that as they come back in.

Proper Communications

With so many working from home, remote conferencing solutions have seen a lot of use in recent months. While it may have been out of necessity at first, many users have begun to see the value of the integrated webcam on their laptop when it comes to holding a virtual meeting.

Of course, if these technologies are so helpful to us now, why should that change once people are back in the office? Communications with prospects and clients alike can be improved through a good conferencing solution. Continuing to embrace their options will only help to make the business and its processes more agile.

Whenever it is that people finally get back to the office for the long term, there’s a good chance that some bad habits may have developed by that time. Make sure that you address your expectations in a comprehensive written company policy. Reviewing these policies with your team, along with your privacy and security standards, will help smooth out the transition process and make your expectations clear.

If you’ve already transitioned back, tell us, how has it gone? Are there any challenges that you didn’t expect? Share them in the comments and reach out to Coleman Technologies for any technical assistance needed. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to learn how we can help your team remain productive, wherever they’re working.

Let’s review what true collaboration is, and how you can lead your company towards more collaborative behaviors in your day-to-day undertakings.

Teamwork and Collaboration Aren’t the Same Thing

First, it is important that we define the difference between these two seemingly synonymous terms. While it is possible to work as a team without collaborating, collaboration requires some element of teamwork to be present.

Consider it this way: by definition, teamwork is the combined action of a group of people. While this could mean that each member of the team is contributing to each step along with their teammates, signifying collaboration, it might instead signify that the task and its requisite responsibilities have been divided up amongst the group.

Teamwork, yes. Collaboration? No.

Other differences between these apparent synonyms:

• There is a tendency for a team to have a set leader to set the course of whatever project is being worked on, while collaboration thrives in an egalitarian group setting.
• Teamwork can be effective in completing a business’ short-term goals, while long-term goals are better served by collaborative behaviors.
• As we hinted at, teamwork requires someone to be in control of the group. Collaboration requires the group’s members to trust one another.

Collaboration Can Benefit Your Business and Your Team

Embracing the cooperative elements of a collaborative work environment can have universal benefits to those involved. For instance:

Your Operations

As the saying goes, two heads are better than one. However, if you have a whole team’s worth of heads, why not make the most of them to help advance your business? With collaboration instilled in your workplace culture, you will find it easier to come up with solutions to your operational challenges. Furthermore, your employees will be more engaged in their work, which itself brings considerable benefits, including increased revenue growth, diminished turnover, fewer accidents, and heightened productivity.

Your Employees

When it comes to the people you’ve hired to work for your business, collaboration can improve their experience as well. In addition to the shared knowledge that can benefit everyone’s quality of work, collaboration can improve the relationships between your employees. This is particularly important, as a study has shown that office friendships are the most important facet of work satisfaction for 70 percent of employees. Fittingly, collaboration leads to increased morale, which positively influences productivity and employee retention alike.

Encouraging Collaboration

So, with so much riding on your office collaboration, it is important that you endorse it in any way you can and actively encourage it amongst your workforce. But how does one do that?

There are a few strategies that you should adopt to accomplish improved collaborative habits.

Unite the Team with a Mission and Establish Expectations

It is important that your team understands how crucial they each are to your company’s success, as this can give meaning to their responsibilities in the context of your company’s shared overarching goal.

This goal is essentially your company’s mission. Once your mission is clarified, it becomes easier to set benchmarks that need to be met and what each team member’s individual role will be in accomplishing it.

Reward Collaboration and Innovation

Naturally, a positive response to collaborative efforts is going to provide no small motivation for your team to adopt them. A similar attitude toward new approaches in the office should also be in place. Risks can often lead to rewards, which means that an employee who is willing to try something new might discover a better method to fuel productivity. At the very least, they’ll confirm that you’re on the right path if your current methodology proves more effective.

Foster your team’s creativity and embrace input.

Support Your Team with Collaborative Tools

Here’s the hard truth: your employees are bound to have varying skill sets. Brian may be a brilliant writer, while Beth may have an affinity for customer service. Allowing your employees to work at those tasks they excel at will only benefit your outcomes. These outcomes can be augmented further using collaboration tools. With more people than ever before working remotely, these tools are more crucial than they have ever been. Make sure that your team is equipped with the technology solutions to collaborate even while distant from one another.

Coleman Technologies is here to help your business collaborate as effectively as possible, with the tools and resources your team will need at the ready. Learn more about how we can help sustain your effective operations through our managed services by giving us a call at (604) 513-9428.

Why Effective Communications are So Critical

There are a few reasons that you want your business’ internal communications to be clear and effective.

Fewer Errors

Miscommunication is rarely a good thing, but in the business setting, it has the potential to be crippling to your operations. If the correct information isn’t shared at the right time, with the right people, productivity will suffer. On the other hand, proper communications can help minimize, or even avoid, many potential workplace errors.

Increased Accountability

When an organization keeps its communications open across the board, it is prone to see an associated increase in companywide accountability. From owner to intern, being responsible for (and being held responsible for) certain milestones in a process keeps each member of a team on-task and motivated.

Improved Teamwork

Naturally, when members of a team communicate properly, they are better able to work cooperatively. As a result, problems often become easier to solve, as ideas may more easily flow and develop. Additionally, potential issues between departments are more easily resolved, preventing interpersonal concerns from affecting the work.

Efficient Problem-Solving

The ability to communicate clearly enables a team to better pool their talents to much more efficiently overcome any issues that may arise. Whether a problem is strategic or technical, having the capability to swiftly solve it will only benefit a business’ operations.

Instant Messaging in the Workplace

Naturally, all of the above outcomes can (and often do) result from the use of an instant messaging application… as long as it’s the right one.

You need to make sure that your chosen solution is intended for business purposes, which means you need to use an enterprise-grade instant messaging application. In addition, you also need to be sure that you and your staff are properly leveraging your solution. Try to encourage the following practices and behaviors in your staff to ensure that your instant messaging solution doesn’t turn into an instant messaging problem:

• Keep it in check. You don’t want a solution that is meant to be a productivity booster to actually harm it. There’s a very real difference between your staff properly leveraging instant messaging capabilities, and aimlessly chatting all day. Encourage your staff to keep their conversations pertinent to the workplace and the task at hand (at least as much as possible).
• Remain professional. Again, conversations on your instant message solution should be far and away focused on workplace matters. It is important that your staff knows this, and resists using the solution to share jokes, GIFs, or memes excessively. Moderation is key.
• Don’t rely too much on it. Not all conversations are appropriate for an instant messaging platform, especially those that contain sensitive or overly complicated details. Some conversations are better shared in person, or in an email, where lengthier messages can be sent.

Have you ever utilized instant messaging in the workplace? Share your experience with us in the comments!

Method One: Clarify Roles

One of the first things that you should do is to ensure that everyone knows exactly what their role is with no misunderstandings. This will assist in establishing processes in which certain team members have a clear sense of what they are responsible for, and how that ties into the larger goal.

There are a few direct benefits that this transparency with your team can bring. First, you can give your team ample feedback into their performance and assign them new challenges and objectives to accomplish. Secondly, you can empower your team members to approach these objectives - all benefitting the same end goal - in their own way. By giving them this power over their own process, you encourage them to take ownership over their work and the end result.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather produce something good if my name was going to be associated with it, if my contributions could be traced back to me.

Method Two: Praise the Team

One of the biggest obstacles to true teamwork is the ego. To avoid creating interpersonal tensions amongst your team through your praise, try praising the team as a unit. While giving one member of your team the spotlight can easily make the other members more jealous than anything else, focusing that spotlight on the team as a whole will help to improve the collaborative efforts of the team. You can always praise that team member in a one-on-one conversation.

There is one caveat to this: while you shouldn’t single out a team member in public, you should make sure that all work done within the team remains transparent. This visibility will help to discourage team members from slacking off and piggybacking on their coworkers, keeping everyone accountable for their share of the work.

Method Three: Encourage Staff Socialization

In order for your workforce to act as a team, they will need to see themselves as a team. This can be accomplished in a few ways.

The real key is to ensure that your staff is frequently spending time as a group.

In an operational sense, team meetings can be invaluable, so long as they also remain productive. Not only can these meetings provide your team with valuable facetime with one another, you can focus on your business’ strategy by analyzing your staff’s status reports side-by-side.

On the more casual side of things, there are a few ways that you can draw your employees closer together. Social activities can help to build camaraderie and friendly relationships. While it might seem corny, ice breakers can be a good way to get your team to open up to one another and, well, break the ice between coworkers. Otherwise, lunches or an after-work meetup for happy hour can help your team see each other as something other than just coworkers, but as friends. Even if nobody finds their “best friend forever”, your team will at least know each other better, allowing them to work together more effectively.

Method Four: Leverage Technology

Finally, if your team is going to act like a team, they’re going to need the tools that enable them to do so. This is what makes collaboration solutions so critical to the modern business. With the right solutions, your team can work cooperatively regardless of where they are, sharing and editing files together.

Of course, not every team member will need to see the same documents, based on their role, which is where the capability to assign network and file access permissions come into play. With these permissions, you can ensure that each team member can locate and access the files they need to be productive and contribute to the greater goals of the group.

Coleman Technologies can help you implement these technologies to support your other team-building endeavors - as well as the success of your business as a whole. To learn what else we have to offer, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

The workplace has undergone a dramatic shift over the past several years in favor of remote work, due in no small part to worldwide circumstances. In fact, many workers who would prefer to work in-office found themselves unable to, pushing the button on the topic of remote work even more. While there are some outspoken companies that want to see the return of in-office work, experts in the industry seem to be of the opposite opinion.

The numbers suggest that a hybrid workplace environment is the growing norm, and companies are adopting policies and procedures to put these accommodations in place.

Really, Not That Many Companies Are Pushing for In-Office Work

The news might report that various companies like Goldman Sachs or Tesla have labeled these efforts as a way to force out “uncommitted” employees; after all, if they can’t come work in-house, they shouldn’t be working here at all, right?

This isn’t really the case; it’s quite rare to see this happen.

In fact, the exact opposite is happening. More companies than ever are willing to accept a hybrid workspace. According to data cited by Prithwiraj Choudhury, one of the associate professors at Harvard Business School, approximately 30% of United States workdays are completed remotely and office occupancy has hovered at around 50%. The numbers don’t exactly represent mandating a return to in-office work.

Hybrid Efforts Can Be Designed for Specific Organizational Needs

You don’t have to stretch too far to see the benefits of a hybrid approach for business, particularly for its employees. The flexibility is helpful and can be a great boon for recruitment purposes. Granted, this is assuming that you can find a way to make hybrid work for your workflows. Your departments might need different things, and you might have to work with your staff to create in-house schedules for various purposes.

Ultimately, however, the flexibility offered to employees through hybrid work arrangements is such a value to them that they could truly thrive in these types of environments when given the chance to do so. Flexibility is sure to be one of the biggest requirements on the radars of highly qualified candidates in the near future.

Work with Us to Improve Your Hybrid Workplace Technology

If your business is ready to consider hybrid technology a priority, we’re ready to help! To learn more, call us today at (604) 513-9428.

It doesn’t matter if your workplace is your typical office space or if it is remote. There will always be factors that can contribute to burnout. These struggles are not exclusive to the location of the office, and if left unchecked they can impact work performance, productivity, mental health, and so on. It’s important that you have coping mechanisms and strategies in place to address burnout before it becomes too severe to counter.

Let’s go over some of the ways you can encourage employees to prioritize their own mental health to reduce burnout from the workplace.

Minimizing Burnout

Here are some strategies you can use to keep burnout at bay.

Stop, Take a Breath, and Focus

If enough pressure builds up, you’re going to break, no matter how strong-willed you are. You need a break every once in a while. It’s important that you make your breaks as impactful as possible by taking a moment to clear your mind of all the clutter and take slow, deep breaths. Once you’re ready, you can get back to work.

Encourage Communications Across Departments

People rely on others to help them get their jobs done, so you should be prepared to ask for help from other departments or other people at your company to handle tasks as needed. You shouldn’t isolate yourself and your tasks from others who might help you get things done in a more efficient or stress-free way.

Be sure to establish clear lines of communication with other departments so when the time comes for collaboration, you’ll know exactly who to talk to and when. Collaboration lightens the workload for all, and it can reduce burnout in spades.

Consider Low-Pressure Hobbies

Some people bring their work home with them, so to speak, when they use their personal time and space to work or worry about work. This kind of stress can wear people down over time and create burnout.

We recommend that all employees have hobbies and interests outside of the workplace so they can get their mind off things when they need to. This will help to mitigate burnout and help them do things they enjoy.

Implement Procedures to Help with Stress

One of the best things you can do for your workplace is to implement procedures that take the stress out of work. You can streamline processes by automating them and reducing the margin for error, allowing employees to invest that time in better, less stressful and more meaningful work, thereby reducing stress further.

Combat Burnout Before You Get Burned

If you keep your team engaged in their work, burnout will eventually become a factor, so take steps now to keep it in check. Coleman Technologies can help you in this effort by making sure that technology struggles don’t exacerbate the problem. To learn more, call us at (604) 513-9428.

What is Social Engineering?

Think of it like this: online, you have some type of social currency. Your personal information, your data, your interactions, your profiles, they all add up to your online life. If someone were to use that information to trick you into providing them access to your secure online accounts, you would be the victim of a social engineering attack. 

Basically, a hacker uses what amounts to the fundamentals of human psychology to gain unauthorized access to an account. Rather than exploiting a vulnerability within a system’s technology, a social engineer will take advantage of the human resources to gain access through relatively simple psychology.

Successful social engineering can be the result of many different actions. Some include: carelessness by an individual, perceived kindness, reaction to fear, and business as usual. Let’s take a look at these actions and how social engineering schemes work as a result.

Individual Carelessness

When there is a lack of diligence carried out by an individual, there are openings for a social engineering attack. This includes trash thrown out with information on it, keeping login credentials out in the open, and other careless actions. It’s important that you and your staff understand that the best practices of password protection, such as using a password manager, are crucial to maintaining the integrity of your company’s network and infrastructure.

Perceived Kindness

Many people won’t think twice about helping someone that asks for help. Social engineering attackers take advantage of the better angels of our nature, by using people’s helpfulness to gain access to secure computing resources. Any person can fall for this type of attack. This is why we stress that in order to keep your digital and physical resources secure, a critical eye for potential intrusion works. That doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk, but if a situation is presented to you that’s out of the ordinary, take anyone’s helplessness with a grain of salt.

Business as Usual

When we picture a hacker, we all tend to think about them the same way. They are brooding people sitting in a dark room typing away at a computer. In social engineering attacks, this couldn’t be further from the truth. A popular social engineering tactic is to gain physical access to a large business--where there are often a lot of moving parts--and then spend time at the business looking for ways into secure digital environments. This could also include straight hatchet jobs, where your employees would help people outside of your business sabotage your access control systems. 

Reaction to Fear

Finally, fear is one of the best motivators. By striking fast and threatening all types of negative consequences if a worker doesn’t help them get into a secure computing system, this kind of cyberattack can be a major problem. 

Coleman Technologies Can Help Protect Your Business

If you are looking to secure your network from cyberattacks, including social engineering, the IT professionals at Coleman Technologies can help. Call us today at (604) 513-9428 to learn more about how we can help you with the training you need to keep social engineering from causing problems for you.

Study after study has been performed over the years about the impact of workplace wellness programs, producing various results. Some have indicated health improvements and cost savings, while others haven’t. However, the studies that were performed in the past had a high rate of issues. Whether there was no comparison group, or the chance of personal bias influencing signups, these studies simply didn’t provide reliable data.

Now, however, researchers from the University of Chicago and Harvard have conducted a large-scale study that meets the requirements that such a study is usually beholden to.

The BJ’s Wholesale Club Experiment

This experiment began by selecting 20 of the big-box retailer’s outlet centers to offer an employee wellness program. 140 additional BJ’s locations did not offer any such program. Across the 160 clubs involved, there were almost 33,000 workers employed.

Participants filled out a health risk questionnaire, took health classes, and had basic medical tests performed. After 18 months, their progress was evaluated...and that’s where things got interesting.

Despite the workers who were participating in this program reporting healthier behaviors than they once exhibited, almost all other factors were left unchanged. Blood sugar levels, job performance and attendance, and employer health care spending all were unaffected.

Why This Might Be

There’s a good chance that the results of this study were skewed by the incentives offered to participants. Participants were given gift cards for attending wellness courses, for a total incentive of about $250. According to founder and CEO of Bravo Wellness, Jim Pshock, this may just not have been enough. According to Pshock, any amount less than $400 is only going to be enough to incentivize people to do what they were already going to do anyways. As Pshock put it: “It’s simply too small to get them to do things they weren’t already excited about.”

Another study, published in 2018 by the University of Illinois, essentially debunked the idea of the workplace wellness program, concluding that it neither reduced costs or impacted behaviors - although this study also found that participants of wellness programs were those who were already healthy and motivated. This potentially suggests that the true benefit of these programs isn’t to make their existing workforce healthier, but to attract and retain healthier employees.

There are other potential contributing factors as well. A recent survey indicated that 84 percent of employees saw their wellness programs as “one-size-fits-all,” a concept that doesn’t really work will all of the various factors that contribute to health. Eighty percent of respondents to that same survey claimed that more personalization would contribute to their participation in wellness programs.

Why You Want to Adopt a Workplace Wellness Initiative

Admittedly, we’ve provided a mixed defense for these kinds of activities, but it cannot be denied that anything you can do to promote the health of your employees will only benefit your business - healthy employees tend not to call in sick, after all.

There are other benefits to these programs as well:

• Reduced Stress - The stress management benefits of healthier behaviors have been well documented. By adopting these healthier behaviors, you and your staff can reduce the stress that comes from the office and approach the source issues more effectively.
  
  
• Community Building - As the boss, you want your entire team to work as, well, a team. Unfortunately, if certain departments don’t work together much, this kind of relationship can be hard to develop. However, many activities that would fall under a workplace wellness initiative can help cross departmental lines, drawing your team closer together.
  
  
• Better Moods - Wellness programs allow employees to try out new activities, which can not only add to their wellbeing, but can also keep them engaged and productive. Plus, studies have indicated that employees who participate in these programs were generally happier with their work situation.

What have you done to cultivate a more health-conscious workplace? Share your strategies in the comments!

Your company’s culture is its identity - the impression that your company leaves when someone makes contact. As such, there are assorted reasons that it pays to create an engaging and inclusive company culture.

Draws in Talent

Let me ask you this: would you rather work someplace that had a reputation of nurturing incoming talent and ensuring that this talent had the resources and access that they needed to succeed in their position, or someplace notorious for leaving new employees to fend for themselves, providing minimal direction when direction is necessary to successfully complete a task? My money is on the first option.

One of the biggest benefits to creating a positive culture in the workplace is that more people will want to make it their place of work. This gives you a wider pool of talent from which to select the best candidates, creating a stronger business.

Of course, attracting this talent is one thing, having it stick around is quite another.

Retains Talent and Reduces Turnover

As long as your company culture matches its reputation, the individuals who accept your offer of employment are less likely to leave, barring any personal circumstances that force them to. This is important, as the sudden loss of an employee can have assorted impacts on your business. These impacts can include dropped processes, missed opportunities, and the costs associated with finding, hiring, and onboarding someone to replace the lost employee.

Of course, you don’t have to worry so much about these impacts if your employees aren’t motivated to leave. This is where having a positive company culture is so valuable - you can better avoid the significant costs of losing an employee, continuing to benefit from their skills in the workplace. Research conducted by Gallup indicated that only 37 percent of employees engaged with their work were actively seeking new employment opportunities, compared to a staggering (albeit understandable) 73 percent of those who had disengaged from their work.

Columbia University conducted research as well, and their results followed in the same vein. According to their results, organizations with strong company cultures saw turnover rates of 13.9 percent. 13.9 percent, compared to the 48.4 percent turnover rates at companies with poor company culture.

Boosts Productivity

A happy employee is a productive employee, which translates to direct benefits for your business if your employees remain satisfied. The right company culture can motivate your employees significantly.  The same Gallup research referenced above demonstrated that engaged employees saw productivity boosts of 21 percent. Another study, by IBM-owned Kenexa, suggested that organizations with an engaged workforce were able to bring in twice the income as an organization without these levels of engagement.

Reduces Employee Burnout

There are many reasons that an employee can experience some level of burnout, whether their schedules are overpacked or their hours are simply too long to be sustainable. However, a negative company culture is often overlooked as the root cause of an employee becoming disengaged with their work.

While employee burnout may seem like more of the employee’s problem at first consideration, there are some very real consequences that a business will need to deal with. For instance, employee burnout has been linked to an estimated 49 percent increase in workplace accidents, and a 60 percent increase in errors.

Stressed out employees are a liability to your company, but helping them to reduce that stress with a better company culture can turn these liabilities into true assets.

Better Attendance

Speaking of assets, your employees aren’t going to be very good ones if they are never in the office. A Harvard Business Review study reported an increase in employee absenteeism of 37 percent among disengaged employees. Naturally, if your employees aren’t completing their responsibilities due to this absenteeism, it is going to have an impact on both your business’ success and internal morale.

However, a more positive company culture encourages your employees to report to work, and as discussed above, leads to improved productivity while they’re there.

Is Company Culture Really So Important?

Based on the outcomes discussed above, it is pretty clear that the better your company culture is, the more effectively your business will be able to operate. So, how can you improve yours?

One way is to give your team the tools they need to complete their tasks more easily than they could with outdated and insufficient IT solutions - and the efficiency boost that new IT solutions will bring can free up some time to develop your company culture even more. Coleman Technologies can help to make sure that you are using the tools that are best suited for your company’s (and by extension, your employees’) needs. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.

Password changes, multi-factor authentication, and countless changes in policy and procedure can make daily workflows more and more complicated. Cybersecurity can truly be a pain—a necessary pain, granted—but a pain nevertheless, and one that can gradually lead to burnout if you aren’t careful. Let’s go over how to mitigate the likelihood of it.

Understanding Security Fatigue

Let’s put yourself in the shoes of one of your employees for a moment—although, if we’re really being honest, the following scenario could easily apply to anyone in your organization, including you.

How often have you sighed when asked to create yet another new password, or groaned when a multifactor authentication prompt pops up, when all you’re trying to do is your job? Does news of the next security training make you roll your eyes?

You aren’t alone. Not by a long shot.

The truth is, modern cybersecurity—for all its importance—is a balancing act. While the human element is consistently one of the weakest elements of the average business’ security, the numerous policies, procedures, and protections intended to help mitigate the vulnerabilities your team members contribute to can backfire.

For instance, how would you feel if it consistently became more and more challenging for you to complete the same tasks you had always been responsible and accountable for, without the tasks themselves changing at all? Pretty frustrated, I’d assume, and motivated to do whatever you could to streamline these challenges…going so far as to cut corners or overlook whatever requirements you could get away with neglecting.

This is the phenomenon known as security fatigue—where there is so much emphasis put on security and the safeguards intended to ensure it, that your team becomes disinterested and behaves less securely as a result.

Some Signs that Security Fatigue Has Set In

You’ll want to be on your guard so you can spot some of the warning signs in both your own behaviors and those of your team members. For instance:

• Have you or your team members grown more lax with your password practices?
• Are you or your team members prone to connect to insecure networks without the added protection of a virtual private network, even when accessing sensitive accounts and data?
• Do you and your team keep an eye out for signs of phishing, or are most messages taken at face value?
• Are work devices commonly used for personal activity?
• Is IT kept apprised of incidents and issues promptly, or are such things only reported when the circumstances are severe?
• Do you or your team members frequently use workarounds to bypass your security?
• Are work devices kept appropriately up-to-date, or have updates been somewhat neglected?

If any of these sound familiar, you may have a bit of onset security fatigue.

How to Correct Security Fatigue

Fortunately, there are a few ways that you can counteract this phenomenon in your business. While we in no way are attempting to minimize the importance of security of all kinds for modern businesses, it is important to also keep in mind that too much apparent security can easily hurt your team’s productivity. Therefore, by helping to take as much off your team members’ plates as possible, through things like automatic patches, remote management, and password management systems, you can better strike a balance between productivity and security without short-changing either.

Coleman Technologies is here to help you do just that. Let us shoulder your cybersecurity needs so your team can focus more on your productivity, without worrying that you’re left vulnerable as a result. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to learn more about what we’ll do, and how you could benefit.

Mindset is important regardless of what someone is doing, but it plays an especially important part in the workplace. This only becomes more true when that workplace is distributed, and work is actually done in the worker’s home.

Let’s go into the kind of perspective you want to encourage in your team as they utilize remote work.

A Positive and Resilient Mindset will Help Your Team and Company Alike

Just a few years ago, the University of Zurich released a study wherein the attitude people had going into remote work had measurable impacts on the outcomes they experienced. Specifically, the researchers were attempting to measure how much impact a more black-and-white viewpoint on whether or not an individual can be successful while working remotely has on their productivity.

As it turns out, there’s a very strong correlation between whether or not people feel remote work is an inherent capability or an acquired skill and their ability to work remotely. By polling 113 knowledge-based workers each week over a period of five weeks, the study showed that the perspective each worker had regarding remote work had a direct impact on their productivity. 

In essence, a worker’s attitude toward remote work served as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Similarly, it is important to remember that—while a lot of remote work can be done to benefit the employee—a lot of remote work may be done out of necessity. Just look at the events of a few years ago for a prime example of such circumstances. In these cases, it is important that your team is also able to be resilient in the face of these matters. Not only does resilience make it easier to respond to these stressors, but it also makes it easier for us to solve problems, work with others, and be productive in various situations.

You Want to Foster Positive Remote Work Habits in Your Team

Resilience and positivity are soft skills you want your employees to have. So, how can you help them develop them?

Build Trust

This is really a two-way street. You and your employees need to mutually trust each other not to take advantage of the situation—you need to trust them not to slack off, and they need to trust you not to blur the line between work and home and expect more of them as a result.

To create this trust, your expectations and goals must be communicated clearly, and you need to understand how your employee expects remote work to play out.

Enable Your Team to Work

If you want your employees to work successfully, they will have to trust that the tools you have provided them will be there for them. We’ve all felt the frustration that comes from trying to accomplish things with tools that aren’t doing the job we need them to do. Just like your remote workers need you to support them, they also need you to support the technology they rely on.

Encourage Communication

We’ve all seen the value that communication offers businesses and the employees that make them up in the office, so it should come as no surprise that communication needs to be equally prioritized in a distributed workplace. It can be too easy for remote employees to be forgotten or isolated, especially if it isn’t an organization-wide thing. Both you and your employees need to take the initiative to reach out and involve everyone in the workplace.

We’re Here to Help

We mentioned that your team needs to be able to rely on their technology, regardless of where they are working. If this is a hurdle to you fully utilizing remote work and enjoying its benefits, Coleman Technologies is here to help. Our managed services allow us to ensure a business’ technology is operational and optimized for its needs, regardless of whether it is being used in the office, remotely, or in a hybrid environment. We can even help you manage that aspect.

Give us a call to learn more at (604) 513-9428.

Power

To start, let’s go to perhaps the most basic need of any technology user: the energy required to keep their devices on in the first place. Let’s not split hairs—the average home office setup might not have sufficient outlets available for all the devices that need to be powered.

If this applies to you, you may appreciate someone giving you a nice surge protector to help expand the number of available outlets you have while simultaneously protecting the devices you plug in.

In addition to this, there are assorted other power-related solutions available that you might consider adding to your wish list. For instance, you may be using two-factor authentication more often as you work remotely, making your mobile device something that needs to be kept on. A charging station or even a power bank may be a welcomed addition to your tools.

Comfort

Of course, productive work is impossible if you aren’t at least somewhat comfortable. You might want to consider adding a few amenities to your list that help support this goal. This can range from requesting a supportive new desk chair, to a comfy seat cushion or footrest, or even a pair of blue-light filtering glasses.

Honestly, there’s a lot of things that could be added to this list. There are tons of computer peripherals available that are specifically designed to make the user’s experience more suited to their preferences. Really, it’s about identifying what makes you the most uncomfortable throughout the workday and identifying the solution.

If you’re a fan of sipping warm beverages throughout the workday, consider asking for a desktop cup warmer.

Personality

All work and no play make Jack a dull boy, so it may not be the best idea to have a totally austere workplace. One or two small tchotchkes shouldn’t hurt your productivity unduly and can make for a great conversation starter if used in the office. Whether it’s a classic Newton’s cradle or some other perpetual motion device, something to fiddle with to help break up the workday can be valuable to have.

If you happen to have a stressful job, you could even ask for a miniature punching bag to attach to your desk. Fans of golf might ask for the pen set that doubles as a desktop putting green. Really, the possibilities here are endless.

Whatever you do choose to ask for, make sure you share your wish list in the comments to help inspire others.

Remember, while this may have been a sillier blog than we usually share, Coleman Technologies is always here to help you with your IT management and maintenance needs. Regardless of whether your team is working in-house or remotely, our managed services can give your business the benefits you want it to have. Learn more by giving us a call at (604) 513-9428.

Technology is only effective in the hands of the right—or, at least, well-trained—employees. To work toward this goal, you’ll have to ramp up your hiring processes to ensure you garner the interest of the right candidates for the jobs. Nowhere is this more true than for your IT department. Let’s go over how you can make your business an attractive employment option for skilled and innovative technicians.

Better Technology Means a More Attractive Workplace

No one wants to work for a business that refuses to upgrade its technology and makes do with substandard solutions—especially in today’s flexibility-minded era. If you want to attract and retain top talent, you’ll need to offer them options like the opportunity for remote work when necessary, or at least part of the time. Your IT department is going to want these capabilities anyway, after all, because they only serve to improve your business’ operations.

Technology Makes Recruitment Easier

Keep in mind that you’re not the only one out there looking for top talent. If you take too much time during the hiring and interviewing process, you might find yourself being ghosted by candidates who were contacted by other, faster organizations. Automation is one tool you can use to ensure that your candidate searches go as efficiently as possible. The right solution will make scheduling interviews and reviewing resumes much easier. This should not only help you attract the attention of top talent, but do so before the competition does, too.

Technology is Great for Professional Development and Education

The last piece of advice we want to leave you with is that you should always encourage your team to expand their current skill sets. Again, with IT requiring constant learning, and sometimes relearning, of various practices and principles, you’ll want to ensure that your team has time to pursue tasks and skills that enrich your business. Automation can free up more time for training by virtue of making tasks easier and less time-consuming. Plus, it also allows your team to be happier with the tasks they are charged with because they will be more impactful and meaningful than rote work. 

If you’re worried about attracting top IT talent, look no further than Coleman Technologies. We can be your in-house IT department just as easily as an outsourced agency. To learn more, call us at (604) 513-9428.

The User Experience and How Security Fits

Let’s face it, the majority of Internet consumers have no idea about data security until something terrible happens. Until they get malware, or get their identity stolen, or their accounts hacked, they assume that there is enough built-in security to facilitate any behavior online. This is not ideal, obviously, but there are a small number of people, around 29 percent, that have enough security awareness to avoid certain websites. 

This actually represents an increase in security awareness, and retailers that are now seeing their sales drop due to security concerns are feeling pressure to improve their security, especially considering that this year online retail sales are expected to climb by nearly 30 percent over 2019.

It is a balancing act. While on one hand, consumers demand a certain level of security while shopping online, they also demand superior usability. A streamlined user experience typically gets in the way of comprehensive security. Think about it this way: a third of users will just delete an application if they experience challenges in usability, including login problems. Therefore, businesses need to weigh what type of authentication measures they use. 

Major Privacy Concerns are Troublesome for Consumers

Another issue that is plaguing online retailers, is how their data is used, stored, and managed. Most consumers are at least cognizant of how important it is to keep their personal and financial information protected and are quick to move past retailers that they deem don’t at least consider their privacy. In fact, 70 percent of consumers view their ability to deny developers of certain apps and websites the right to resell their information as a key consideration of whether or not to use that particular site/app. This goes against user practices, however, as nearly three-quarters of consumers will give over some information for a discount. Some consumers will provide a whole profile for as little as five percent off their purchase.

With this in mind, it is left to the business to figure out how to get the information they seek, while also paying attention to consumer’s growing distrust of online data collection. It’s a tough situation for both parties. Many businesses will try to provide discounts on a user’s birthday, but that is only possible if they actively work to collect that information. Some retailers routinely do business this way, but many are starting to find new ways to get more engagement from their customers. 

Every Business Needs to Be Secure

Every single business can use data to their advantage, but with more people concerned about their online privacy than ever before, it is important to have the security protocols in place to allow them trust enough to do business with you. If you are looking for some help with your business’ security, or would like to learn more about the options available to help you find the happy medium between helping your customers protect their privacy, call the IT security professionals at Coleman Technologies today at (604) 513-9428.

Downtime can be lethal to businesses, not only because too much can lead to failure, but it can easily waste a lot of your team’s time as everyone shifts gears to find a solution. This is why is it best to avoid it as often as possible.

That’s why we’re discussing three of the most prevalent causes of downtime, and what you can do to prevent them.

Your Technology is Unreliable

Faulty technology is often the inciting incident behind downtime. Hardware occasionally fails and needs to be replaced, which takes time. Outdated or buggy software frequently crashes. In either case, proactive monitoring and maintenance can help ward off these issues. 

This is why we recommend businesses implement remote patching and maintenance tools. These tools allow such issues to be addressed simultaneously and automatically, applying all fixes to every networked machine.

Your Users Lack Training

User error is behind plenty of IT issues, and downtime is no exception.

User error can be defined as any situation where an employee makes a mistake or is unfamiliar with the full capabilities of the tools they use. Downtime is usually involved in whatever situation applies. Making this issue more potent is the fact that you’ll generally face one of two scenarios:

1. Your users adjust and develop their own, typically inefficient processes, and the only way you realize there’s an issue is if you monitor their performance or catch it in your business metrics.
2. An accident or mistake could snowball into larger problems, interrupting operations.

However, both can be reduced drastically by properly training your team members.

You Didn’t Expect the Unexpected

Life can very easily take us by surprise, and in the case of business, this surprise can translate to challenges and interruptions. There is no shortage of events that typically lead to some amount of downtime, most of which being categorized as either natural disasters or security breaches.

Weather events—whether a hurricane, tornado, blizzard, severe thunderstorm, or other—can all potentially pause your operations. The same can be said of the litany of cyberattacks out there… your business could be stuck in a holding pattern until these issues are resolved appropriately. While these circumstances are inherently unpredictable, you can and should devise contingency plans to address them.

Protect Your Business from Downtime

Unfortunately, no one can eliminate your business’ risk of downtime. It simply isn’t feasible, as too many factors and variables are involved. That said, there are things that you can (and again, should) do to protect as much of your productivity as possible.

The first step is devising a business continuity plan. This plan consolidates all of the above considerations (as well as many others) to evaluate the risk of each and puts safeguards and contingencies in place to minimize the impact of any form of disaster. Next, you need a data backup and disaster recovery plan to facilitate this business continuity plan. Protecting your data (which is easily your business’ most critical asset) puts you in a much better position to recover from an unpleasant event.

If this sounds like a lot, Coleman Technologies is here to help. Call us at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.

“What does—and doesn’t—work?”

To motivate your team to take ownership over their responsibilities and invest in your successful operations, you need to communicate that what they say has credence. Your team can be a goldmine of insights if you hear what they have to say. Think about it, they’re the ones that have hands-on experience using the tools that you’ve put in place.

Asking this question also gives you the opportunity to hear any criticisms of the processes and procedures that your team is currently working through. Again, as the people actively following these processes, your staff will likely have the best impression of the most effective way to complete the task at hand. Listening to their feedback will tell you if a solution is proving ineffective or if the team needs more training and support to properly make use of it.

Regardless, your team members are likely to have information that you would find invaluable, so it pays to listen to what they have to say. Who knows, one of them may have a solution to a longstanding problem that just needs to be brought up.

“What can I do to help you succeed?”

This is an important question to ask, again and again, as time goes on. After all, as situations change, the answer to it will change as well. By asking this question, you can use the feedback you collect to improve your employees’ engagement levels that much better. Opening yourself to this kind of input enables your team to enjoy a greater level of access to you.

This question can also help you reinforce the data that you generate by asking the first question we discussed, furthering your efforts to improve your processes.

“What has your team done to further the organization’s goals?”

By asking this question of your team, you can help encourage them to collaborate more with each other and use the communication tools you’ve provided. Asking them what their coworkers have accomplished in tandem to them, helps you make sure that they remain aware of the company’s greater processes and how their efforts contribute to the organization’s success.

In asking it this way, you’re also encouraging this team-based focus to integrate into your company culture. As a result, your team members will begin to think more as a team and work together to accomplish everything on their shared agenda.

“How would you make what we offer our clientele better?”

This is a practical example of what we’ve already discussed—asking those with first-hand knowledge to draw upon their experience to help improve what it is you’re discussing with them. Seeking insights from those who are working directly with your clientele will help you to identify and resolve the biggest impacts influencing your company and services.

“If you were me, what would you do differently?”

This question can provide you with a variety of useful information, from the biggest pain points that your team is experiencing to all the small inconsistencies you may have missed. It also helps you encourage your team to see things from a perspective of leadership.

This is what you want, as it isn’t enough anymore to simply have drones pecking away at assigned tasks. You want to have people who are ready to embrace innovation and are engaged enough to work their way upwards in your organization. Handing the power over to your team, even in the hypothetical, helps to show the employee that their input is appreciated and valued.

Should this feedback ever reference any difficulties due to insufficient technology solutions and resources to complete a task, Coleman Technologies is here to help. Our services are designed to improve the efficacy and security of your workplace, boosting your productivity.

To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Today, IT is important for many things. It's not just a small part of a company… but how deeply is IT woven into modern workplace culture? Let's delve into how technology and culture coalesce in today's businesses.

Workplace IT Reliance Intertwines with Company Culture

The symbiotic relationship between workplace culture and IT is impossible to deny. Nowadays, most businesses heavily rely on IT in the workplace.

A company's culture affects how it uses technology. Technology can also impact a company's culture.

IT solutions help people communicate, work together, and get more done, which is important for a successful and happy work environment.

Communication and Collaboration

Nowadays, more people are working from home or traveling while working. As a result, teams need to use technology to stay connected. Video conferencing, instant messaging, project management tools, and cloud-based collaboration platforms have become normal workday processes. This technology helps companies improve their operations, even when employees are in different locations.

Similarly, workplace culture has changed due to how connected everything is now. Smart companies focus more on being flexible, responding quickly, and using technology to its fullest degree. This is especially true in terms of keeping coworkers more connected.

Productivity and Efficiency

Technology helps people communicate better and work faster. For businesses striving to remain competitive, the appropriate tools are crucial. 

IT solutions can do the boring work for businesses, so your team can spend more time on new ideas and planning. This breeds a culture that rewards creativity and problem-solving rather than one that is bogged down by repetitive work.

The Role of IT in Employee Engagement

A strong workplace culture engages and motivates its employees. Using technology to make work more fun and interesting can help employees become more involved and happy. 

Employees can become more engaged and improve the organization's culture by participating in games, using customized training programs, and receiving rewards. All of this can be done using technology.

Challenges and Considerations

Using IT has benefits, but making it a natural part of how people work can also be hard.

Security, privacy, and access issues can impact a company's use of technology. Businesses must address these concerns thoughtfully to maintain a positive culture.

Balancing Tech and Human Touch

IT is necessary in today's workplaces, but combining technology with human interaction is also important. Relying too much on technology at work can make people feel lonely and hurt their personal relationships. Companies must ensure that their technology helps people work together and support each other.

After all, technology is necessary for work. It helps us talk with each other and work together. It also keeps employees interested and involved. Businesses need to use IT to support their employees and create a culture that values technology and personal growth.

Coleman Technologies is here to help. Our managed IT services are designed to minimize the friction that IT issues cause and support your team’s collaboration capabilities. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.

With technology playing such a massive role in modern business processes, having someone in the higher ranks to oversee it is a huge advantage. This is the role of the Chief Information Officer—the CIO—which makes them an integral part of the modern C-suite.

So, what kind of thing does the CIO (or your business’ equivalent of it) need to know and consider in order to fulfill their role? 

Let’s go over a few of the priorities the CIO will need to have in the coming year and years, and what skills they’ll need to have.

What Does Your IT Leadership Need to Focus On?

There are a few key areas that the person taking the lead on your business’ IT should devote their attention to in the coming year.

• Budget Defensibility - With the signals we’ve been seeing as far as the economy is concerned, budgets are bound to be pretty tight for businesses. This puts the often resource-intensive IT department in the crosshairs for cuts...even though these cuts could negatively impact the business as a whole.
  
  As such, it will be important that a company’s IT leadership has a good handle on how much return the department is seeing on the company’s investment into it, and that they have empirical data to support these conclusions. Focusing on value will help you to communicate this more effectively.
  
  
• Data Security and Protection - The unpleasant reality is that cyberattacks aren’t going to go away. Why would they? Economic and geopolitical struggles often go hand in hand with cyberthreats—many of which can and will target businesses of any size—which only adds to the current need for improved cybersecurity across the board.
  
  
• Adaptability - The world learned the hard way how effective remote (or “distributed”) work can be just a few years ago, despite many resisting it for as long as they could. Despite distributed work quite literally keeping many companies from going under, a considerable number of these companies have been quick to pull their employees back into the office. For many of these employees, it has been an unhappy return.
  
  Today’s CIOs need to understand and embrace remote work as the net benefit that it is, creating a strategy that allows the business to take full advantage of its employees’ skills, wherever they happen to be working.

We Can Help Your Business, Supporting Your CIO (or Even Stepping Into the Role)

As a managed service provider, we have the capability to work alongside your Chief Information Officer to ensure that their plan for your business’ IT is properly implemented in a way that is both effective and fiscally responsible for your business’ situation. Don’t have a CIO? No problem—we can also serve as a virtual CIO for you, taking the lead on your business technology strategy.

Learn more about the options you have with Coleman Technologies by giving us a call at (604) 513-9428!

Initially, the advocacy of Internet Rights was just that: the right to have access to the Internet. While this isn’t a problem for as many people as it once was, some places still don’t have fair, affordable access to high-speed Internet service. Some nations, despite providing access, have Internet laws that subdue use due to an overlaying censorship. This issue, and the monetization of collected consumer data, are two of the hot-button issues today for Internet Rights advocates.

Lead Up

The Internet is a relatively new technology, especially in the manner it is being used by people today. As a result, there are different views on how these technologies are disseminated, who profits from them, and how non-controlling entities have their rights repressed. As a result, you’ll find from the early days of Internet rights advocacy, the largest voices were from organizations that found the equitable portion of the Internet either unnecessary or repressive to the rights of consumers.

Notice that the access to the Internet was not even on the roadmap. The nature of the early commercial Internet was such that it could be successfully described as libertarian. Through the end of the 1990s, as the first round of dot com investments started to tank, it became obvious that the technology would end up bigger than anyone had anticipated and needed regulation.

In the U.S. many fights have been undertaken in the subsequent 20 years. Many of which were pushed by Internet rights advocates. One of the most famous is:

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997)

In an attempt to clean up what some people considered indecent content on the Internet (pornography and the like); and more accurately, to keep kids away from this content, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act. The ALCU, which is a well-known civil rights advocate group, filed suit. The provision was eliminated by two federal judges before being heard in front of the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower courts’ rulings. This was a major blow against censorship; paving the way for free expression on the Internet.

While the ALCU isn’t exactly an Internet Rights Advocate, the landmark case ushered in a new world of free speech on the Internet; and, it sets the tone for Internet rights advocates to this day.

Personal Privacy

Today there are many organizations looking to protect people on the Internet. Sometimes their views overlap, sometimes they don’t. One of these groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), is a major player in the fight to keep speech (and content) free from censorship on the Internet, the fight against the surveillance state, and most notably, the ongoing fight for individual privacy.

Businesses of all kinds, as well as government agencies have grown to take significant liberties with people’s personal information. Organizations like the ALCU and the EEF work tirelessly to get the topic of personal data privacy in front of decision makers.

Have you ever wondered how you just had a conversation with your friend via some type of app about fingerless gloves and now your sidebar on every website is now filled with fingerless glove ads? Most users don’t fully understand that organizations that you interact with online keep a profile on you. All of your actions, any personal or financial information that you share, and more is stored in a file that is often packaged and sold off by those organizations to advertising firms.

These advocates, among the other issues they stand up for, are trying to push the issue of personal data privacy. The main point of contention is that companies profit off of the information people provide, and since this information is very clearly personal in nature, it is their belief that individuals are being taken advantage of. This debate has been ratcheted up significantly with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that intends to protect individual information.

While it might be a matter of time before the U.S. gets a data privacy law in the same vein as the GDPR, Internet rights advocates will continue to act in the public’s favor on this issue, and many others.

Net Neutrality & Access to All

One of the biggest fights that Internet rights advocates are undertaking is against the companies that deliver the Internet itself: The Internet service providers (ISP). For those of you who don’t know, over the past several years the U.S. Government created mandates that forced ISPs to provide access to applications and content without favoring any, even if they are the ones that use the most bandwidth.

The theory is that the typical Internet user only does so much on the web. They typically access the same sites and use their Internet connection for the same things. This creates a situation where ISPs, using market adjustments would want to get more money per byte than if users used a variety of sites to do the same. With federal control, they were forced into charging a flat rate.

The net neutrality laws that were instituted in 2015 were repealed in 2017, as controlling bureaucrats argued that there were enough people without fair access to the Internet and the only way to persuade the ISPs to commit to investing in infrastructure that would curb this problem is by repealing the net neutrality laws. Needless to say, this caused quite a stir.

Internet rights advocates were quick to point out investment in Infrastructure is in these ISP’s best interest and giving them the ability to slow down Internet speeds as they see fit is not good for consumers. Unfortunately for most Americans, these ISPs are the companies you have to get your Internet service from if you want speeds that allow you to use it the way you want. Advocates are still trying to do what they can to educate people about the benefits of net neutrality and have set up websites with information and for people to give their support. Organizations like the aforementioned ACLU and EFF,  the American Library Association, and Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, and Free Press Action currently sponsor www.battleforthenet.com, a one-stop site for all things net neutrality.

Advocacy can go a long way toward giving a voice to people who may not think they have one. What Internet-related topics do you find to be problematic? Leave your thoughts in the comments and subscribe to our blog.

Among IT professionals, an acronym is sometimes used when discussing certain issues and challenges: “PEBKAC,” or Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. In other words, user error. 

While it’s a fun little inside joke that can help frustrated technicians blow off steam, we cannot deny that PEBKAC implies some disrespect for the end user. Frankly, that’s not the perspective anyone offering support should take.

Instead, our approach to IT support is more reminiscent of a very different perspective.

Good IT Support Requires Empathy

For context, we have to go back to 1996 and acquaint ourselves with a researcher and publisher named Philip Agre. A doctoral graduate of MIT and researcher of artificial intelligence, Agre also wrote prolifically about a variety of topics and maintained an online newsletter called The Network Observer. UCLA has preserved his work and it is available to be read freely in their archives.

In 1996, Agre posted a brief article titled “How to help someone use a computer.” In it, he documented an impressive list of platitudes he felt support professionals (or really, anyone) should remember when helping someone else use a computer and a list of best practices to follow while providing that assistance.

It’s fascinating to read almost 30 years later because it really shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same. For instance, the following nuggets are just a few pieces of advice Agre gives the reader:

“Nobody is born knowing this stuff.”

“You've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner.”

“A computer is a means to an end. The person you're helping probably cares mostly about the end. This is reasonable.”

“They might be afraid that you're going to blame them for the problem.”

Later, in the “rules” he gives for a support professional to follow, Agre clearly endorses a gentle, empathetic approach.

While We Break Some of Agre’s Rules, We Follow the Important Ones

As a managed service provider, a key part of our job is operating in the background to help prevent users from experiencing issues. Otherwise, we’re there for them to call on when they actively need assistance. Our goal is to resolve the issue and get them back on track.

This directly contradicts one of Agre’s virtues: “Your primary goal is not to solve their problem. Your primary goal is to help them become one notch more capable of solving their problem on their own. So it's okay if they take notes.”

However, beyond this and a few other exceptions, we totally align with what Agre endorses. After all, it summarizes any good IT technician's approach: listen, educate, and resolve. Not only is it a more effective means of solving a problem, it does so by building a community, and as Agre put it:

“Knowledge lives in communities, not individuals. A computer user who's part of a community of computer users will have an easier time than one who isn't.”

We like to think that all our clients around British Columbia have a positive experience working with us. If this sounds like something you want to assist your business in achieving its goals, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask. Call us at (604) 513-9428 to start a conversation about your needs and concerns.