IT organizations have been suddenly burdened with the task of enabling large scale Work from Home (WFH) due to global pandemic resulting from the rapid spread of COVID-19. Many countries have mandated lock-downs and strict measures to curb the spread of the virus. Work from Home is no longer a flexible option to maintain work-life balance, but it has become the need of the hour as a response to the pandemic.
IT organizations that have been working on enabling new ways of working for the end-users will fare well through the adoption of digital workplace solutions. This article examines key priorities for the IT organizations and approaches for enabling a scalable Work from Home and Remote Worker solutions.
Enabling End-users
One of the key objectives of the CIO is to create an empowered workforce that is highly productive, resulting in business efficiency and better employee experience. From an end-user perspective, the key priorities are:
- Adoption of conferencing and team collaboration tools
- A scalable WFH/Remote Worker/Teleworker solution
- Data security and compliance measures related to end-user devices
- Revamp of policies, training and development programs
- Changes in organizational culture to proactively foster remote working culture and mindset
- Measuring and monitoring user experience and productivity
The above priorities often involve inputs from a variety of functions within an organization such as Human Resources, Security and Risk, Legal, Middle and Senior Management.
Key Challenges
Critical challenges in enabling the remote work are not just limited to technical difficulties, but there are environmental, social and cultural dimensions as well, which need proper considerations.
- Environmental, Social and Cultural:
- WFH interferences
- Social isolation
- Employee communication, team and organizational updates
- Technology Operations Related: Enabling BCP for critical processes involving facilities, infrastructure, application, people and supply chains.
- Self-service/self-help for end-users
- Reliable and secure network and internet access
- Remote access Virtual Private Network (VPN) services
- Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
- Scalable collaboration services (Email / Messenger / Telephony / Conferencing)
- Centralized visibility and dashboards to monitor systems availability, performance and user experience
- Security and Compliance: Tools and processes in place to monitor security threats and vulnerabilities across applications, network and end-points.
- Unauthorized access
- Data backup
- Data Loss Prevention
- Data Breach
- User Behavior Analysis
- System Behavior Analysis
- Lack of Training and Business Continuity Awareness: Managers and employees being in sync over the business continuity processes (BCP)
- Frameworks to effectively manage employee and team productivity
- Customer engagement while working from home or remotely
- Training employees in the operations, proper use of productivity and collaboration tools
Key Recommendations
Organizations can build a scalable and robust WFH and Remote Work solutions while ensuring user experience and user productivity goals are met, and at the same time adhering to data security and compliance norms. IT organizations must work closely with other functions in the organization to realign the organizational culture and mindset to drive the rapid shifts in ways of working, processes, skills and work culture.
Solutions such as Zero Trust Networking is considered to secure the environment. Zero trust states that organizations should not trust any entity inside or outside of their perimeter network at any time. It provides the visibility, and IT controls needed to secure, manage and monitor every device, user, application and system being used to access business data. The emerging SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) concept can be explored to secure all access across devices, networks and applications comprehensively. How Happiest Minds Technologiescan help?
Happiest Minds – a Born Digital and Born Agile IT services firm focused on Digital Transformation. We provide a full spectrum of life-cycle services covering consulting, transformation and management & optimization services across IT Infrastructure and Security Landscape.
Our Infrastructure Management Services consist of a comprehensive, integrated suite of services to manage an Enterprise’s distributed and Hybrid IT/Cloud environment as a single entity with single point-of accountability. Our ELLIPSE platform provides automation of standard operations and provides an integrated CxO dashboard to view the dynamic state of our customers’ application and infrastructure.
- Infrastructure Consulting and Maturity Assessments
- Hybrid Cloud Services
- Smart & Secure Workspace Services
- Network Services
- Service Automation (ITSM & ITOM)
Conclusion
As the global pandemic severely impacts the businesses, a scalable Work from Home and Remote Worker solution will enable business resilience. Businesses can focus on a combination of Digital Workplace, Network and Endpoint Security solutions to ensure business continuity and keep the companies running smoothly and securely now and over the long term.
, a Knowledge seeker and Practitioner of IT technologies since 2004. Seasoned IT professional who has developed his skills around IT Infrastructure technologies be it conventional or cutting-edge technologies. He works with Happiest minds; In his current capacity he paly diversified techno managerial role and encirclement his responsibilities as Technologies consultant, practitioner and Presales consultant and works for all round segment of enterprise to develop IT solutions best suited for their kind of business. Soft attitude guy and Strong believer in Hard work are ready to go down to acquire knowledge.