What do Businesses Need to Provide Staff with to Work Remotely?
In April of this year, the UK's Office for National Statistics revealed that 49.2% of employed adults in the UK worked from home (hSo). In September, research undertaken by Finder found that 60% of the U' 's adult population were working from home, with 26% of the working population planning to continue working from home after health crisis measures end.
With large sections of the UK workforce moving to work remotely as businesses see the productivity and cost benefits to doing so, it's important to first consider what you'll need to provide to staff as they make the permanent move from the office to their home. Systems, flexibility options, and more should all be considered.
With large sections of the UK workforce moving to work remotely as businesses see the productivity and cost benefits to doing so, it's important to first consider what you'll need to provide to staff as they make the permanent move from the office to their home. Systems, flexibility options, and more should all be considered.
Systems and Hardware to Work Successfully
Naturally, when outfitting staff to work remotely, one of the primary considerations is what devices and hardware they're going to need to complete their work. Depending on the type of work involved, this may be little more than a laptop and a headset for successful work and communication. Such staff would be sufficiently catered for with an ASUS laptop and one of our peripherals. In other sectors, this may be more involved, including a desktop system, multiple displays, communication hardware, and perhaps even set-ups such as the ASUS Hangouts Meet Hardware Kit for multi-user conferences. Such configurations could include the following, representative of a creative user:- An ASUS ProArt Station PA90 desktop system
- 2x ProArt PA32UCG 32-inch 4K displays
- An ROG Strix Go headset
- An ASUS mouse and keyboard
- An ASUS router for maximum home coverage and bandwidth limitation removal.
- Miscellaneous peripherals, including touch displays, drawing tablets, and more.
The Flexibility to Choose Where They Work
Following closely from the previous point, it's essential to consider where staff are working from. Most may set up a home office, and therefore a desktop system may make the most sense (space-conscious set-ups may enjoy the advantages of Mini PC systems such as the ASUS PN50). However, other users may need to travel for client meetings, may work from multiple locations, or may need to travel between their home and the office regularly, dictating the need for a mobile device such as a laptop. Depending on their work, such users may need high performance, despite using mobile devices; the ASUS range of Zenbooks and Vivobooks make sense in these scenarios, offering a range of devices with unique features including flip-touch displays, secondary displays, and more, alongside high-performance components.The Right Training
You may find when transitioning your staff to remote working, some flourish while others flounder. It's crucial to start everyone off on the right foot, offering training and support to those struggling to make the transition to working apart from others. Ensure you set up a system that helps ease staff members away from offices into places for remote working and gives them the best chance for success. This means efforts such as including grace periods where your business understands there may be a dip in productivity in the first few weeks of remote working as your team adjusts to a new way of working. It also means helping them move to a cloud-based way of working, including platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Docs so that the way they work is easily transferable across systems, wherever they are. Additionally, doing so means your team can enjoy the same level of in-person collaboration on work while working remotely. Technology issues may also crop up during this time, and staff may need to have devices repaired, replaced, or configured correctly to work away from the office's IT environment.Team-building and Social Opportunities
Following on from the previous point, it will take time to adjust to working apart from colleagues. You may see staff member's morale dip during this time; many enjoy the social environment working in an office provides. Ensure you cater to such individuals when moving to remote work by offering opportunities to bond with the team as a whole and to interact face-to-face, whether that's through regular video meetings or via in-person activities and meetings held in the office. Platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams are perfect for such occasions. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other team members; everyone is facing the same new approach to working apart, and may appreciate you setting up regular chats, ongoing social occasions like book clubs or company team quizzes. While such in-person events may not be possible or easily organised in today's climate, as more businesses opt for permanent remote workforces, those teams will need you to maintain that feeling of comradery and team bonding.Reasonable Expectations and Time Off
Finally, it's easy to wonder what your team is doing while not at their desks in the office. It's also easy to assume working from home is more comfortable and relaxing due to staff being in their own environments. While this may be true in some cases, it may surprise you when staff members ask for time off or don't deliver 1.5X the work performance they did while in the office. It's important to understand that working from home won't automatically improve staff productivity and that even though they're not in the office, they will still need time away from their desks and work. Ensure you provide ample opportunities for time off, and don't set unreasonable expectations for your team. Work hours should remain just that; work hours. Set hard limits on when people should be working, so they have the space to switch off from work when the day is over. Staff should also work to keep a fixed schedule throughout the day to reflect the more rigid type of structure working in the office gave them; regular lunches, exercise schedules, playing games with colleagues on breaks, etc. Make sure you and your team communicate on expectations, and work to understand how they’re adapting to the changes that are happening. The world of work is changing. Get in touch with ASUS today to find out more about ASUS solutions for remote working: Contact ASUS Business
