Pythian Blog: Technical Track

Working Through COVID-19: Tools for Effectively Managing Remote Work

by Iuliia Shchilnyk on Mar 23, 2020 12:00:00 AM

In an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, many businesses have had to move to a 100 percent remote workforce virtually overnight. Although a valiant and needed effort, some businesses may be ill-prepared to make such an immediate and drastic transition. Remote work brings about many unique challenges teams must work through immediately to remain productive.

The new normal: common challenges of remote work

According to Global Workplace Analytics, only 3.4 percent of the workforce work from home at least half the week. It’s safe to say this number has drastically increased over the past few weeks as businesses begin implementing social distancing principles via remote work. Unfortunately, businesses find themselves face-to-face with the challenges of remote work that have prevented them from taking the plunge before now.

Team collaboration and communication

Perhaps the most common challenge is managing a team spread out across various locations, each with their own devices and their own work to accomplish. Some businesses try to implement various tools such as task managers and document sharing apps in an attempt to ease collaboration. Unfortunately, productivity often suffers due to the sheer number of tools used. According to Google, 69 percent of workers waste up to an hour each day switching applications and 40 percent spend at least a quarter of their workweek on manual, repetitive tasks.

How to solve this challenge

How do you increase collaboration and communication without bogging your team down with unnecessary tools? The answer lies in Google Workspace. Workspace alleviates these issues by making it easy for you and your team to communicate, collaborate and work in sync using Google tools. For example, there are tools for communication such as Meet and Gmail. There are also creation and collaboration such as Docs, Sheets, Forms, and more. Workspace also makes it simple for you to manage users, devices, and data securely using tools such as Vault, Admin Console and Mobile Management. Plus, there are multiple Workspace plans to fit your unique business size and needs such as Google Workspace Basic, Business and Enterprise.

Risk mitigation

Remote work depends on cloud-based technology to fuel collaboration. Yet, tech-based work comes with security vulnerabilities that require adequate network settings for mitigating risk. Unfortunately, it’s often difficult for businesses to enforce security best practices when their workforce is remote.

How to solve this challenge

For optimum security, your remote work system requires remote access, risk mitigation, remote capabilities to resolve tech issues, automatic updates and more. Chrome Enterprise does all of that and then some by combining Chrome OS, Browser and Chrome devices to form a secure digital ecosystem. Chrome’s web-based management console allows you to provision, configure, and manage your team’s devices quickly and simply. Chrome updates automatically and offers immediate access to all Google Workspace tools for increased productivity. Both Workspace and Chrome Enterprise can ensure remote work is successful for any organization, whether large or small.

How can Pythian help?

Right now, time is of the essence, which means you must eliminate time wasted on your legacy platform. Pythian can help your team set up a remote ecosystem quickly. We also use our Change Management team to educate and train your team on how to work smarter, smoother, and faster using Workspace and Chrome. We’re a Google Cloud Premier partner who can help you migrate your work to Workspace, move your business to Google Cloud, or develop a custom workflow application for your organization. From grab-and-go services to full Chrome Enterprise deployment, we’re ready to guide you through developing and implementing your remote work system to boost productivity and success.

Ready to go remote? Give our team a call today.

During a time of uncertainty, one thing’s for sure: we’re here to help you work smarter by “going Google.” If you’re ready to improve your remote team’s productivity, send our team a message today.

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