IT Tips for Supporting Remote Workers

Acquiring high-quality IT assistance for remote workers can present its own set of unique challenges. H Grant Support puts customer needs first and offers personalized attention and collaboration, striving to meet expectations while surpassing them. H Grant Support prides itself on delivering fast, remote it support services compared to what is offered in the market – be it maintaining servers or staying in contact with global teams. If that’s what’s required of us – H Grant Support has you covered. Here are a few steps that could help support remote employees.

Make sure your IT support team is available 24/7

If your staff works remotely and around-the-clock, IT support must also be readily available around-the-clock. Otherwise, when one of them experiences an IT problem at night and must wait until normal business hours to fix it, valuable working hours could be lost.

Provide remote desktops and devices

Employers often aren’t aware that their employees don’t possess sufficient tools for working remotely, although most remote workers do have computers provided by their employer.

Provide employees with equipment owned by your company to increase security measures, give equal access to employees and minimize support processes.

Accessing corporate information via personal devices can expose your company to risk. If employees use their own devices for accessing corporate data, an updated MDM policy can protect sensitive data of your business from being exposed. MDM policies cover various areas such as managing and enforcing policies as well as inventory control, security management and software distribution.

Embrace the cloud

Switching business functions to the cloud increases productivity while increasing security at work, not to mention significant cost savings. Plus, cloud computing makes backup/retrieve of data easy as well as software deployment easier!

Implement strict security protocols

Remote workers are typically the first ones to encounter security concerns. Their behavior could result in security breaches on networks that could spread throughout a company.

Employee training on remote security measures to protect company data and personnel is of utmost importance. Make sure you use strong passwords, multifactor authentication as well as antivirus and spam filter protection software in order to ward off cyber attacks.

Set up a secure VPN

VPNs (virtual private networks) have become extremely popular with remote workers as a way of protecting laptop data online while still offering the same functionality, security and appearance of being part of an internal corporate network.

Data sent via VPN VPN can be encrypted to prevent hackers from attempting to gain access and steal sensitive data.

Remote sessions come equipped with built-in and real-time monitoring capabilities for troubleshooting remote devices.

Your IT team’s ability to remotely “take charge” of fixing and diagnosing any issue can be an immense time saver.

People unfamiliar with working remotely may encounter more IT problems at home than at the office. Troubleshooting remotely may prove challenging and frustrating for those lacking technical know-how.

Provide communication options

Email may no longer suffice as a form of communication; therefore, give employees the freedom to select alternative modes that suit them best.

Assemble messaging applications like Slack and Microsoft Teams for instant calls and messaging in real-time; Zoom can manage meetings and sensitive matters more efficiently while providing more intimacy for remote workers and reducing isolation or feelings of loneliness.

Challenges Associated With Supporting Remote Workers

Employers face various difficulties in supporting remote workers:

Ensuring devices are up-to-date

Company-owned equipment given to remote employees requires security patches and updates be current. Furthermore, overseeing employees who use personal devices may pose another security risk, making management time-consuming.

Resolving issues quickly

Are your employees who work remotely causing you issues? How are IT issues being handled in a prompt (and safe) fashion? Is there sufficient staff in place to take on help desk calls from remote employees that may require special consideration?

Keeping devices secure

Protecting devices With increasingly frequent threats like malware malware, unsecure Wi-Fi networks, intercepted texts and calls as well as phishing attacks and credential theft on the rise, it has never been more crucial to make sure our devices are secured.

Maintaining good communication

Remote workers sometimes feel their work is “out of sight and out of mind.” To maximize camaraderie, collaboration, and information flow across teams effectively. Exploring effective communication tools is paramount.