Governments, organizations, businesses, and people have already adapted to work in pandemic conditions. Now, most of them are preparing for the changes in business management that will inevitably occur after the end of the pandemic or a significant reduction of quarantine measures. At the first stage, they had to overcome the inability to be physically in their usual workplace, work in the office conditions, and urgently switch to a remote form of work.
New Working Conditions: Who Will Survive?
The elimination of quarantine will last quite a long time, during which the companies have to decide how their business will be organized and how it will combine remote and on-premise work in the future. In fact, we should talk about strategic planning, the goals of which are not limited by economic indicators. For example, is it worth returning to the usual on-premise regime, switch to a hybrid option that includes work from home, or even implement the concept of a distributed office? All these issues are extremely relevant and require early discussion to develop optimal solutions.
What Are the Lessons to Learn?
The transition to remote work was forced, so it was done in a hurry and required deep analysis, lessons learned, and optimal solutions for the future. Many companies were forced to implement new technologies, expand their working tools and organize the migration of data and accounts (for example, transfer Thunderbird to Outlook, create safe cloud space, etc.). Therefore, it is worth analyzing what happened, which solutions were effective, what should be avoided?
According to the Group-IB report, 74% of companies surveyed completely, and 10% partially switched to work from home. At the same time, only 31% have already used remote work before, and most of them built it from scratch. When switching to remote mode, many large companies require:
- additional laptops and tablets,
- mobile applications, and Web interfaces;
- more server capacity to support smooth operation.
There were also difficulties in monitoring employees working with critical information: as a rule, these are representatives of financial departments. Although most companies were able to ensure the transition of employees to a remote mode, the approach to security with such a functioning infrastructure requires constant research and refinement.
Finalizing the Results
According to Ipsos’s study, teleworking saves travel time and money allows people to get up later in the morning, but at the same time creates a lot of inconveniences. It turned out that after a week the share of those who are completely satisfied with remote work was only 22%. About a third of the respondents said that it was difficult to concentrate at home, so the effectiveness dropped.
The results of work in remote mode revealed the main issues that require additional study: ensuring information security, both online and offline, setting up secure communication channels, implementing cloud information exchange services. It is unlikely that anyone considered such risks before the pandemic: now, it is a good time to review them!
