Learn about the four steps to take
Step one: look to your technology
Think about your current IT estate. It’s probably been developed over a long period of time, with ad-hoc purchasing made to suit legacy systems or through cost-effective procurement methods.
This means that you’re unlikely to be able to support remote working at scale, no matter how much you’ve invested in the past few years. You need to perform a deep examination of what you have in place so you can identify what’s working well and where problems need addressing.
You also need to establish where business-critical processes and services can be fulfilled remotely in the future. It’s a challenge for all business leaders: can your organisation maintain business continuity with the entire workforce operating remotely? This might seem overly ambitious, but this is how you should be thinking. Digital start-ups work this way from the get-go and grow into significant multinational corporations.
Step two: make sure your employees can use your technology
It’s a common pitfall of businesses that they assume their people have a good understanding of all the software and devices they use.
While there are always people on hand in an office to help, this is much harder to provide when everyone is dotted around the country. And if someone gets stuck, they’ll become frustrated and less productive.
Offer regular support to ensure individuals know where to reach out to for help, and make sure your IT teams have everything they need to provide that help remotely.
Step three: keep your people happy
It cannot be stated strongly enough that employee health and wellbeing is a top priority for businesses when adopting agile and remote working.
And as well as providing educational, social support and encouraging a good work/life balance, you also need to maintain your company culture!
Again, technology can help. Make sure you have the right collaboration technology available to your people and take all your future technology purchasing decisions with them in mind.
Step four: enjoy the benefits of future business continuity and resilience
If you deliver agile and remote working correctly, you will maintain business continuity, and prove yourself all the stronger against future challenges.
Productivity won’t take a hit either. Indeed, it’ll most likely increase as long as you support your people with the technology and infrastructure they need, and continuously analyse and develop your processes.
