In Singapore, the nature of office work is rapidly evolving. As recently as 2018, a study revealed that 68% of workers spent at least one day a week from the office (Singapore Business Review, 2018). Almost half (47%) surveyed also said that they spent most of the week working outside of the office.

With the advent of COVID-19, more companies today accommodate flexible remote working options for employees, even as some challenges remain.

These factors, among others, have given business leaders pause when considering investing into digital transformation, in fear that it would not yield commensurate benefits or the many potentially unknown consequences.

Acceleration to the New Normal

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are forced to urgently enable remote work options for the whole company, if only to ensure some form of business continuity. For business leaders, the question of remote working capabilities was no longer, “should I do it?” but “how do I do it securely and effectively?”

Fortunately, leaders today have plenty of options to enable remote work, many of them fairly quickly. The availability of high-speed connections and Cloud-native tools that can be easily procured online allow an organisation to be connected over new platforms quite easily.

With remote work, video conferencing often replaces face-to-face meetings, but can be subject to intrusion. Information security and governance becomes harder to manage.

Also, accessing the various systems used by staff for day-to-day operations can become frustrating, as many legacy systems that were not designed to support a remote workforce strain to function optimally.

Additionally, with decreased levels of face-to-face interaction, people management and performance tracking become more complicated, with a potential of affecting team morale.  

While leaders adapted to settle in to a new normal, new concerns arise, chief of which is, “is my organisation as productive and secure as it should be?”

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Remote Work Productivity Checklist

To help you assess your team’s remote working productivity, we’ve put together a questionnaire to help you figure out where your organisation is today. This will help you see if your present solutions and practices are effective in enabling remote work and also ensure that your organization is future-ready:

• Are my teams equipped and trained to use remote working platforms optimally?
• Do you feel like you are tapping into the full features of your digital platforms?
• Does your solution allow for “fully Cloud” and “fully digital” workflows for your teams, without the need to access a separate, un-digitalized physical system?
• Are your teams able to connect securely over video or voice conferencing platforms?
• Are your teams able to function on a device of their choice, enabling productivity on-the-go?
• Are you able to swiftly configure your IT infrastructure to adapt to dynamic changes in operations (e.g. COVID-19circuit breakers, adapting to the next normal, introducing new capabilities)?
• Are you able to access company data and applications without facing interruptions or downtime?
• Are you able to maintain information security controls across your workforce consistently and seamlessly?

If you are facing challenges with any of the questions raised above, reach out to us today to find out how you can unlock your teams’ productivity.

The workforce of the future is upon us. Is your organisation ready for it?