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.

COVID-19 homeworking for business: Quick guide

With the government publishing its coronavirus action plan earlier in March, and the more stringent measures that have come in since to enforce COVID-19 homeworking where possible, it’s quickly become vital for businesses to adopt homeworking arrangements for users. If your organisation isn’t familiar with this, it can be a daunting task, especially in a short space of time!

To help UK businesses prepare as effectively as possible , we’ve put together a short guide and a COVID-19 resources page that outlines some key points for adopting temporary homeworking – and making it work for your business and users.

Our experience

We’ve done this based on over 10 years experience helping our customers with remote workforces working in a secure, productive and efficient manner. So we’ve summarised some of the main IT considerations for COVID-19 homeworking into a simple checklist – addressing these before (or very quickly after) homeworking starts will ensure all parties are happy and comfortable with the new working arrangements, and ensures that business can function as smoothly as possible during the COVID-19 crisis.

COVID-19 homeworking checklist

  • Do your users have the right hardware for working remotely – high spec laptop, mobile, comfortable workstation, printer, etc?
  • How will you and your team collaborate for group meetings, workshops, customer demos, etc? Should you consider collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams? This means you can get together for formal meetings, but also have daily coffee breaks in front of your screens to catch up more informally
  • Can confidentiality and compliance with data protection regulations be satisfied from a homeworking environment?
  • Don’t forget to update email signatures with mobile numbers instead of office landlines if they will go unanswered while the office is closed (IT can do this centrally across all signatures in Outlook)
  • Are users able to work at home securely with access to servers, VPN, etc?
  • Have you provided the right file sharing, collaboration and filing tools such as SharePoint and OneDrive

Further guidance about work duties and how to support your homeworkers with tasks, breaks, regulations and so on can be found here.

Find out more

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, please call us on 01274 396 213 or read more about our support services here.

Printers & consumables for home workers during the COVID-19 crisis

Home office

Whether you’re looking for a quick solution for printers for homeworking during COVID-19 crisis, or you’re looking to deploy a more strategic print refresh, Complete IT Systems provide full range and expertise on printers and consumables.

We offer competitive prices, expertise on many lines of printers, inks and toners from all the major brands, in addition re-manufactured and compatible cartridges to fit all budgets and requirements – most lines are stocked and available on a next-day business delivery service.

From small desk based ink jet systems up to the high end departmental multi-function lasers, we have your requirements covered.

Find out more

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, please call us on 01274 396 213 or read more about the print and consumables brands we carry here.

More guidance for businesses trying to quickly setup to enable homeworking is available here, and we’ll be publishing many more tips and guidance over the coming days and weeks.