While each of us certainly hopes that coronavirus won’t become a major health event in their part of the world, the reality is that businesses are already considering every contingency plan with a close eye towards avoiding serious disruption of their operations.
Remote working, or the practice of working for an extended period outside the formal office, is growing steadily in popularity, enabled by a whole host of digital tools of virtually every description, from Web conferencing and e-mail to mobile collaboration applications and virtual event platforms.
In my long experience with digital productivity and collaboration trends, when it comes to remote work I find that most organizations are still either in the fairly early stages or have not committed enough yet to invest in full-blown strategies and enablement. Consequently, no matter who you are, there is usually considerable room to improve the digital employee experience when working outside the office.
So, to help organizations as they prepare for a surge in remote workers as the coronavirus story unfolds around the world, I’ve put together a fairly comprehensive quick start guide below. This guide will help those organizations just getting started as well as those who may already have existing remote work programs but would like to significantly upgrade their effectiveness to minimize impact to their customers, workers, and suppliers.