While we’re providing more remote support to workforces who have relocated from shared offices to remote home working arrangements, there have been companies forced to close their doors and other continue on with social distancing and other measures in place. This new COVID Safe World has certainly created change! We thought we’d share with you what we learned through this time.
At ITOPIA.
As remote workers ourselves, we have been able to adapt quickly to continue supporting our clients through their changes. We moved away from on-site support initially, to allow everyone time to adjust and for us all to get our head around the new social distancing and sanitising rules. This meant remote support was on the increase. For those clients already on remote support packages, this was a smooth transition. We also experienced an increase for these services from new clients.
Success stories.
We learned that for those business owners who had worked with us to move their IT system away from office-based servers to cloud based solutions, their transition to supporting a remote workforce was easy. In fact, for some it was as simple as buying their staff a chair from Officeworks and asking them to log on from home tomorrow.
Challenging stories.
We learned during this time that leadership and communication are king! Those clients that we support that still have office-based servers in place and use desktop computers, but required their workforce to work from home, experienced a few more challenges with the transition. Of course, we assisted with the IT side of things, but to witness their communication and leadership with their teams during the changes, and to watch them navigate the decision-making process during stressful times was a privilege. Well done to those business leaders – you know who you are!
Benefits from COVID19.
We don’t need to remind you of any of the additional challenges COVID19 has thrust upon us. However, we have learned about some great benefits now and we thought we’d summarise:
- Hybrid workforces are now a good thing. Entire teams seem are working between home and the office and making it work. This seems to be not just an IT or safety issue, but a HR issue that is a positive one. Who knew a virus could be good for us?
- IT security has been addressed. Where there were some ‘we’ll get to it later’ type issues, COVID19 has made the security decisions a priority. As an IT support team – we couldn’t be happier about this!
- Our attention to ergonomics has been refreshed. The great office chair and perfect desk to floor height at the office will never again be taken for granted!
We sincerely hope there have been some benefits for your company from this crazy world and we look forward to supporting you into the future.
