Reopening the workplace after COVID-19: A checklist for businesses

As the UK and other countries and cities start to ease lockdown restrictions, this handy checklist for reopening business workplaces can help you jumpstart safe and efficient returns to work, and kick-starting of business.

You and your users have been quarantined in your homes for the past few days weeks months, and now
authorities are looking to lift restrictions and open up. You may be thinking, “We’ll be back soon, and I can get out of this house!” The problem is, if you just pick up and go, and don’t prepare for having people back in the workplace, you may run into issues that could have been easily avoided. So now is the time to prepare.

This checklist is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it can help provide guidance as you look to reopen. It’s
organised into four sections:

  • People
  • Workplace
  • Technology
  • Your Customers

Every company’s situation is of course unique, but evaluating your plan with these components in mind can help you get organised and anticipate obstacles that may stand in the way.

Extra security layers for collaboration tools

As you can read in the Technology section of the checklist, many users have been using Microsoft Teams for collaborating with colleagues during the lockdown period. Yet one in three users experience data loss in cloud applications like Microsoft Office 365 and Google G Suite.

With more and more businesses now using the Microsoft Office 365 suite of tools, it’s more and more vital to ensure that your data is adequately backed up to avoid accidental loss, or the risk of being held to ransom for your own data.

We’ve pulled together a list of 4 reasons to add an additional layer such as Datto SaaS protection to your organisation’s data, and this video outlines Datto’s SaaS protection services in a little more detail.

Find out more

You can read more about Datto SaaS data protection in this article.

As Datto Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.

To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.

Datto

Help during the COVID-19 crisis

The expert team at Complete IT Systems are publishing a series of guidance and tips to help you and your business through this situation. This covers all aspects of quickly providing safe, comfortable and efficient home offices for your users, including data security, collaboration tools, laptops, desktops, print and consumables, support for critical IT tasks, and more. Click here for our central COVID-19 resource hub.

 

 

5 tips for effective remote working with Microsoft Teams

Many teams are having to quickly adjust to remote working, and if it’s not something they have done before it can take a bit of getting used to – especially the social side of work.

To this end, we’ve put these short tips together to share with your users if you’ve rolled out a new collaboration tool such as Microsoft Teams. This will help them replace the social and interactive elements of office life as best they can during the current crisis.

  1. Start the day with a “stand up meeting” – greet one another with videos on just as you would in a physical office. It gets everyone started for the day and you can chat about your evening
  2. Coffee breaks – get together mid-morning and mid-afternoon to chat and enjoy tea or coffee together as a team
  3. Randomly ping colleagues at various points during the day
  4. “Ask me anything” (within reason!) brainstorming sessions with managers and sub-teams
  5. Friday after work – enjoy a drink together online after you finish work on a Friday

In some ways, all of these actions could actually make teams more sociable than in an office!

Adjusting to homeworking during the COVID19 crisis

Over the coming days and weeks the expert team at Complete IT Systems are publishing a series of guidance and tips to help you and your business through this situation. This will cover all aspects of quickly providing safe, comfortable and efficient home offices for your users, including data security, collaboration tools, laptops, desktops, print and consumables, support for critical IT tasks, and more.

Get Microsoft Teams FREE for your users!

Connect on Teams anywhere with Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices, or bring remote participants into meeting spaces of all sizes with Teams.

We know Microsoft can be a little daunting to navigate – we can guide you through the process. Just give us your email address and we’ll get you started.

Talk to us – we’re just at the end of a phone

Complete IT Systems Ltd have been providing these services to our customers for over 10 years and have many satisfied clients. For more information on how we can help, or just to get some general advice on IT and business supplies during the crisis, please call us on 01274 396 213. You can also see the full range of products and services we offer, or read more about our support services here.

Remote working that doesn’t feel remote

In the era of accidental homeworking, it’s vital to give your users the tools to enable them to remain productive, creative and efficient from remote locations – the trick is combining this flexibility with the requisite levels of security to prevent your customers’ data from falling into the wrong hands, or your core IT systems to be hacked.

The trick during the COVID-19 crisis (and for effective homeworking strategies in general) is to provide the right portfolio of collaboration tools to ensure that teams don’t become remote and isolated from one another, and that customers, prospects, suppliers and partners can be managed effectively.

Remote working that doesn’t feel remote…

The best initiatives come from meeting, talking and sharing ideas, so it’s crucial that your users working from different locations doesn’t mean that teams drift apart and become more siloed.

It’s therefore crucial that your users can connect, chat, collaborate and produce just as productively than they can in a face-to-face environment in an office.

Collaboration, virtual meetings and file sharing with Office 365

The Microsoft Office 365 portfolio provides the perfect way of handling these challenges of remote work – and in some ways make for an even more productive environment than that of an office environment!

The power of Microsoft combines to provide a best-in-class operating system, enterprise level security safeguards, and seamless integration between applications for optimal user efficiency.

Where to start?

We know that the Office 365 portfolio can be a bit daunting due to the number of options and variables. But that’s where the licensing experts at Complete IT Systems come in, and we can guide you on where to start based on your priorities and composition of your teams and users. We can also help you choose, deploy, use and maintain your solutions.

There’s no “off the shelf” fit for any business, but in short the Microsoft tools can be summarised into the following business needs:

  • Work hub: Teams provides a central “place” where employees, contractors and partners can talk, chat, hold meetings, and share files and apps for a fully collaborative working experience
  • Securely sharing and editing documents: OneDrive for Business and SharePoint enable seamless sharing and collaboration on presentations and other documents
  • Email and calendars: Online and offline with Outlook

Need some help quickly deploying homeworking for your business?

The expert team at Complete IT Systems are publishing a series of guidance and tips to help you and your business through this situation. This takes in all aspects of quickly providing safe, comfortable and efficient home offices for your users, including data security, collaboration tools, laptops, desktops, print and consumables, support for critical IT tasks, and more. Read more in our central COVID-19 crisis hub.

Talk to us – we’re just at the end of a phone

Complete IT Systems Ltd have been providing these services to our customers for over 10 years and have many satisfied clients. For more information on how we can help, or just to get some general advice on IT and business supplies during the crisis, please call us on 01274 396 213. You can also see the full range of products and services we offer, or read more about our support services here.