Enable home office. How is it done?

November 12, 2020

In the current situation, the employees' requests for home office options are becoming louder. The Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) already recommended creating home office options in April of this year (BBK action recommendation). However, this poses a surprisingly large challenge for many companies.

In order to send employees to the home office, several conditions must be met:

The employee must be provided with the technical means to be able to handle all tasks.
The employee must have full access to all work-relevant data and systems.
There must be simple communication options for internal and external communication.
The safety of the systems must not be compromised.

The right technology for the home office

The first step to the home office is providing the right technology. Of course, you can let your employees work with their own PC, but this has several disadvantages.

You cannot ensure that the computer is adequately protected and that up-to-date antivirus software is installed.
Programs that may be needed cannot be pre-installed, but must be installed and configured by the employees themselves.
Required connections, such as VPN, cannot be set up by the company.
The personal PC offers a high degree of distraction possibilities, which can reduce productivity.

Therefore, you should ensure to provide your employees with the necessary technology. The simplest way to do this is with laptops. Laptops do not need to be set up separately and offer a high degree of flexibility. All necessary settings can be made by the company and required programs and systems can be pre-installed. With built-in cameras, speakers, and microphones, which are now standard equipment, video conferences are also possible to maintain communication. In this way, a familiar and secure working environment for your employees can be created without much effort and cost.

Access to everything important despite working from home

The most important prerequisite for effective work from home is access to all work-relevant files and systems. The correct implementation varies for each company.However, what always makes sense is the relocation of files from local systems, hard drives, and internal network storage to a cloud.

At the mention of "cloud", many people's alarm bells start ringing. But the idea that a cloud is not secure, or that data is stored on some American servers without control over who has access to the data, is far from the truth. Storing in a cloud simply means that files are stored on a server and are accessible via the internet. This can also be the company's own server, on which any measures for the security of the server and the data can be taken.

The advantages of a cloud are obvious. The data is accessible to anyone who has the permission to do so.Data loss is prevented by a suitable backup system, such as our Veeam Backup solutions. It is also possible to track in the cloud who last made which changes to which files.

Enabling access to the cloud from the home office is then just a small step. If the cloud is accessible from the internet, employees only need their access data. However, this is not recommended if sensitive or particularly protected data is stored in the cloud. In that case, it makes more sense to limit access to the company's internal network and set up VPN connections or remote desktop.

If you do not yet have a cloud solution in your company or need help setting up VPN and remote desktop, feel free to contact us. Our cloud solutions have something for everyone.

The connection must not be lost

Despite spatial separation, communication within the company must be maintained and contact with potential customers should be kept as unrestricted as possible. The latter can be relatively easily accomplished with company mobile phones. However, many fear that internal communication will collapse. Therefore, it is important to provide employees with suitable systems and take the right measures.

To keep an overview and discuss the tasks that have been completed and are pending, it is advisable to hold a short daily meeting. Microsoft Teams, which is included in the Microsoft 365 offer, is particularly suitable for this.Microsoft Teams not only gives you the ability to host video conferences, with all necessary features such as screen sharing and a message chat, but also offers many other useful features. You can create task boards, link file systems, build an information system, integrate Azure DevOps, and much more. This ensures your internal communication and can even be significantly improved.

How do the systems stay secure?

There is often a fear that opening internal systems to the outside leads to many security problems. However, here too, only the right measures need to be taken to avoid potential risks.

In addition to the universally applicable safety measures, such as password protection, using long passwords, and automatic locking of computers, which can be implemented relatively easily, securing communication channels is often the bigger problem. Nowadays, however, external access can be secured just as well as internal. The first step is to adequately secure the computers themselves. For this purpose, antivirus programs like Panda Endpoint Protection are best suited. Subsequently, a secure connection, usually via VPN, must be established. Company-owned devices can also be configured in such a way that the VPN connection is automatically established and the device behaves as if it were directly connected to the network in the office. This also prevents private use of the devices.

As you can see, it doesn't take much to enable your employees to work from home. We are happy to assist you in each of the necessary steps. If you don't have your own resources for setup, feel free to check out our Home Office Complete Service. We take care of all the steps to prepare your company for remote work, tailored to your individual needs.