Working from home

Staying productive, sane & secure whilst working from home

The past couple of weeks have seen a tremendous shift in our regular office environments as working from home becomes our new normal. Business have been thrust into embracing remote working and whilst the perks of having no commute, better lunch options and sitting in your comfies is refreshing for some, adapting quickly to a new routine can be tough for others. As stressful and overwhelming as our new norm may feel the guys and girls at Systemagic want to ensure our clients are feeling confident in the tools they have on hand to operate as best they can during these times of uncertainty.

To help pave the way through our new remote working environments we’ve pulled together must haves when it comes to working from home, so grab yourself a cuppa and check them out below.

Devices

Advances in technology have enabled us to transition quite easily from our offices to our homes, so ensuring you have access to all your go-to tools, networks and passwords from a computer or laptop is key. At Systemagic, we spent the majority of March enabling customers to work remotely from their devices but we were also inundated with laptop orders. Now the initial panic of enabling home-working is over, it’s worth considering if the device you’re using is fit for purpose – is it secure, does it have antivirus software, is it quick enough to keep you productive?  If you feel you might need extra devices to enable your business to continue to operate at 100% drop us a line.

Collaborative Software

Working from home can be pretty isolating which is why taking the time to communicate with the rest of your team is super important. Microsoft Teams, a firm favourite at Systemagic is a group chat, communication and video conferencing package allowing users to collaborate with one another through a variety of formats such as video calling, instant messaging, whiteboards, polling and so much more. You can invite people external to your business to a video/audio meeting and now that the fear of being on camera has quickly passed we find it’s one of the best tools available to get you communicating.   We’re taking our ‘Embracing Microsoft Teams’ breakfast round-table seminars online so if you’d like a demonstration please let us know.

Security

With hundreds of thousands of people now working remotely, online hackers are looking for new ways to exploit vulnerable users.  If you read our previous blog then you’ll know there has been an influx of Coronavirus related phishing scams in recent weeks, and this is only set to increase as time goes by. Now workers are out of their regular office environment it’s important to stay secure. Ensuring you have an effective antivirus solution in place to protect your computer is vital (how many people overlooked this when grabbing their personal laptop and setting it up to work on?), enabling multi-factor authentication when possible and not clicking on any suspect emails or links are all factors to be considered which will tighten security and keep users and more importantly their data protected. We strongly recommend Microsoft’s Advanced Threat Protection as the best way to avoid phishing threats so if you don’t yet have this in place then now might be the opportune moment to get it set up.

Chances are you’re reading this from home. There’s no time like the present to really crank up the communication with the rest of your team, not only to increase morale but productivity too. We believe having the appropriate tools at your disposal, keeping spirits up by communicating regularly and having the peace of mind you’re safe and secure are three key elements that can help you and your team ride that working from home wave.

If you have any questions on your setup, the best software for your business or you’d like us to check the security measures your organisation has in place one of our superstar technicians would be more than happy to assist, just give us a shout!

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