IT Answers: How to Get Back to the Office After COVID Closure?
While permitted to, offices throughout BC are opening to normal or near normal workforce capacity on a timeline that they are comfortable with. But in order to get staff back on the floor after the COVID closures certain assurances must be in place. In an effort to make this transition a safe and seamless one organizations are looking for help from a variety of partners. IT support firms are among the most important of them. Here’s why.
3 Ways IT Support Allows Your Staff to Transition Back into a Workplace Environment When Reopening After COVID 19 Closures
1. Helps Reorganize Your Office for Space for Comfort and Greater Efficiency
Reorganizing your office (seating, reception, cubicles, meeting spaces, etc.) is not as simple as moving furniture around to ensure 6-foot distancing between staff. Your IT infrastructure relies upon thoughtful office layout to ensure proper access for wiring, routers, IT hardware, and IoT devices. This is one area that your commercial interior designer cannot assist with.
Instead, an expert IT support firm can come in and take on these internal relocation (office and equipment) projects. We can reconfigure what goes where to protect your new spacing requirements and tech infrastructure alike. In fact, you can use this as an opportunity to update outdated tech being used by your company. Better yet, we will work on your organization’s schedule even if that means we have to come in after-hours. We’re more than happy to lose some sleep so that you can rest easy. Learn more about out IT project services.
2. Provides Tools for Team Collaboration Without Frequent Face to Face Meetings
While you may be ready to bring staff back into the workplace, it doesn’t mean that it’s a good time for frequent face to face meetings even if physical distance requirements are met or exceeded. However, team collaboration is extremely important to project success and overall productivity and in most cases it must occur in realtime. How to you make that happen when stopping by someone’s corner office or cubicle or gathering in a conference room is somewhat frowned upon (for now)? By leveraging cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) productivity solutions such as Microsoft Office 365.
However, setting up and managing MS 365 (or other SaaS solution) on your own can lead to a number of missteps along with missed opportunities to employ tools you didn’t know were available to you. Initial configuration and staff training is key, and will ensure more efficient communication and collaboration in the office even when you can’t all cram into a breakout space for a brainstorming session. SAV Technology will connect you to MS 365 or other SaaS far better than any attempt to do it in-house.
Learn more about our IT expertise for a variety of software and hardware solutions that will boost productivity in your “new” office environment.
3. Provides Better Response to Threats
It’s easy to follow new health and safety protocols in the office when everything is going smooth. It’s another when other threats penetrate the workspace environment. When a disaster strikes, be it a cyber attack, power grid outage, or extreme weather event, normal protocol all of a sudden goes out the window. Staff may revert to old ways as they scramble to save data, workloads, and prevent on-premesis servers from overheating (etc.). By migrating your operations to the cloud and instituting a better disaster recovery plan your staff won’t panic when someone hits the panic button because they know that data and workloads are backed up and easily recovered. When cool heads prevail your office will able to function, follow procedure, and find comfort amidst even the most uncertain of times. All you need to do is reach out and ask for help.