When the COVID19 crisis hit, chances are you had to make some fast decisions to transition your employees to remote work. Those solutions may have worked in the short-term, but if you’re one of the estimated 74% of organizations that are going to make the choice to keep employees working from home, you will need a new, sustainable strategy for your remote workforce. Denver IT services can give you the solutions and answers you need to keep your employees working efficiently, productively, and securely no matter where they are.
Why are So Many Denver Businesses Choosing to Keep Remote Staffing?
Businesses are looking to the future and seeing a silver lining in the COVID19 cloud. Many organizations are realizing that remote workers save them money and boost productivity and employee satisfaction.
Decreased Utilities and Office Rental Expenses
When an SMB decides to allow remote work, they are saving money on utilities, such as electric and water bills, as well as essential services such as cleaning crews and office maintenance. They also consider the possibility of moving to smaller offices to house only their essential on-site workforce, or even transitioning to virtual offices and eliminating their office space rental fees altogether.
Increased Employee Satisfaction and Loyalty
Surprisingly, 66% of remote workers feel they are more productive than when they worked from an office. They believe this increase in productivity is due to:
- Increased work-life balance
- Decrease in missed work due to obligations or sick days
- Increased time spent working instead of commuting
- Less office-related interference and distractions coupled with fewer meetings
- Increased feelings of job satisfaction and loyalty to their employer
- More hours spent voluntarily working, such as evenings, weekends, or early mornings
- Flexibility in scheduling their workloads
Decreases in Ancillary Expenses
From post-it notes to pens and printer paper, your business spends more on ancillary expenses than you would think. Expenses such as snacks, coffee, and breakroom snacks along with bathroom necessities including soap, paper towels and toilet paper aren’t necessarily items you think about, but they add up every month.
Eliminating Office Furniture and Upgrades
When you supply your office workers with furniture, you’re signing up for repairs, replacements, and upgrades. Remote workers supply their own office environments, decreasing the amount of money your business will need to spend on necessities such as chairs and desks.
Decreasing Equipment Costs
With your employees working from home, equipment costs can be kept to a minimum. If you decide to equip your employees with the devices they need to work and stay connected, however, it’s a good idea to look into Denver IT services to negotiate deals with third-party vendors for your machines and devices, as well as to maintain them.
Increased Talent Pools for Hiring
If your business is transitioning to a permanent work-from-home solution, you can take advantage of a much larger pool of talent when hiring. Without geographical limitations you may find the employee who fits your needs perfectly, whether they are across the city, across the state, or even across the nation. This keeps your company staffed with highly qualified personnel, giving you the competitive edge you need to stay on top.
Denver IT Services Can Help You Make the Transition
Whether you are looking to keep some of your Denver workforce remote or creating a hybrid telecommuting model requiring them to report to the office a few days a week, Denver IT services can give you the solutions you need to make the transition and sustain it.
IT Services Help you Choose the Right Tools, Applications, and Software
Some of the choices you made were a knee-jerk reaction to suddenly facing a new world of remote workers. Are you still trying to make your office solutions fit your remote workforce? Denver IT services can help you streamline your apps, giving you what your work-from-home employees need to succeed.
Office 365 offers Teams and other cloud-based solutions to keep your employees connected. These cloud offerings include file storage and access to all employees connected to your network for real-time collaboration. Your Denver MSP can show you how to use these tools for increased employee productivity and more efficient communications as well as help you install them, maintain them, and update them to newer versions as they become available.
Denver IT services providers often offer third-party vendor management services to help you negotiate the best prices and equipment for your remote workforce.
Reliable Backup Solutions
With employees taking devices almost everywhere they go, it’s all too easy for a device to get broken, lost or stolen. What happens to the data stored on those devices?
Your Denver IT services provider will offer reliable disaster and recovery backups and a working Business Continuity Plan. A professional MSP will test these backups routinely to make sure the strategies are still working for your business, and to update them as needed.
Denver IT Services Offer Cybersecurity Platforms That Work
Cybercriminals have been using COVID19 and the increasing remote workforce to their advantage. Hackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their attacks, relying on remote workers to be more relaxed about their device and network security.
MSPs in Denver offer layers of security, including:
Firewall
The first level of defense, a firewall is programming that monitors all traffic to a network and allows it or blocks it according to preset security parameters. A firewall keeps unauthorized users from being able to access your network, and can be set up in software form, in your hardware, or a combination of both.
Spam Filters
Since nearly 55% of all email is spam, having a spam filter in place is the next level of security. Spam is more than just a nuisance; it frequently houses malicious links. Spam filtering is only one way to keep your employees from accidentally clicking an attachment that infects your network, but it is a very important step in an effective cybersecurity plan.
Antivirus
Antivirus alone isn’t enough to fight cybercrime; it takes a multi-tiered approach that includes continuous network monitoring and a dedicated Security Operations Center, too. Iconic IT’s Denver IT services provides you with the final piece of your cybersecurity strategy with endpoint detection & response (EDR), complete antivirus and cybersecurity solution.
Identity and Access Management
An identity and access management strategy helps create guidelines and procedures for who is accessing your network, what files they can access, and how they can prove that they are who they claim to be. This helps keep the damages from a breach contained, since only some files will be accessible to the hacker, and nearly eliminates the chances that a hacker can break into your network to begin with.
Help is a Phone Call or Email Away
When your remote workers don’t have a reliable way to report IT issues, their productivity comes to a complete halt. Having Denver IT services means having a centralized phone number or email they can use to report IT problems. MSPs can remotely access anyone’s systems, wherever they are located, and usually visualize the problem and solve it immediately. In the case of lost or broken devices, an IT services provider can ship a replacement immediately as well as set the employee up with the tools and applications they need to continue to work from home while waiting for the new equipment.
Co-Managed Services
If you already have an internal IT department, they might need an extra hand dealing with all the issues and concerns that a remote workforce faces daily. You can outsource some of your IT needs to a Denver MSP that provides co-managed services. This means that your internal IT department can get the help it needs to sustain your remote workforce, along with strategies and cutting-edge tech solutions. Co-managed services won’t replace your internal IT department; this model of outsourced IT works alongside it.
Iconic IT is the Denver IT Services Provider for Your Remote Workforce
Iconic IT had already been planning beefed up antivirus measures and cloud service offerings long before COVID19 forced employees out of the office. That’s why of all the Denver IT services providers, Iconic IT was one of the first to start successfully transitioning their SMB clients to a remote workforce model.
Iconic IT is prepared to help your business sustain a remote workforce, either temporarily or permanently. Your business’ solutions may already be exactly what you need to maintain your remote workers, or it may need a little updating to keep your employees working safely and productively. Iconic IT offers a free, no risk, no-obligation consultation to help you decide if you need to change your strategies, or if you’re prepared to sustain your remote workforce through COVID19 and beyond.
