For many companies and their employees, the sudden transition from ‘I am in Office’ to ‘Working from Home’ without any preparation or planning was not smooth but returning to office need not be a bumpy ride. The unprecedented situation triggered by the global pandemic made many organizations scramble as it was never covered under the contingency plan. However, as we are returning to office finally, if not all at least a few, it is important to plan and take all the right measures to ensure employee safety and efficiency.

To facilitate seamless RTW, the IT infrastructure of your company has a crucial role.  Irrespective of the core source of your IT support – an in-house IT team or a professional IT services company, it’s time for the IT to get to work, quick.

Get IT ready before reopening

You don’t want your workforce at the office unless they have all the facilities to get the job done. IT makes a part of the day-to-day tasks of mostly all your staffs starting from the receptionist to all the way up. Naturally, you need the IT infrastructure to be back in full strength before your other staffs get back. Ask your IT support to visit the office and ensure facility readiness days before reopening.

IT support readiness

To set the stage right, consider the IT roadblocks that are most expected to come up with employees starting to work from office after a long gap. Expired passwords and mis-synced software should be the first point of concern. The anti-virus software might be out of date or missing a necessary patch to ensure full security.

Scanning all the devices for any software or hardware issues is essential. The IT support should ensure that ancillary devices like the printer, scanner, copy machine, everything is in perfect condition, and your staffs will not have to waste time because the ink in the printer is dry or the copy machine is not running.

You might need to implement health guidelines into your IT plan and be ready to modify it from time to time according to the changing guidelines by the authority.

Home to Office – Data transition

Your staffs need all the data they have been working on to continue the projects at hand. If you are using cloud hosting in your business and your employees have been syncing their systems with the cloud routinely, data transition can be simple. However, if they have been saving the files on their office-laptop only, it will be a vital task to get that data on the central database before they take the next step.

If your staffs have been functioning from multiple systems or their home computers, the transition can be critical. First, the total data (without missing even a single file on another computer) need to arrive your IT support, scanned for infections, and then backed up in the database before the employee can start working from the office-system. However, in case your employees are working on and off home, resorting to cloud storage is the only feasible long-term option. You can consult companies offering IT services for business for a smooth transition to the cloud.

It is essential to consider the potential data transition issues that might hinder the productivity of your workforce when they get back. Take the necessary steps proactively to eliminate such problems.

Bridge the communication gap

While your employees will be returning to the office, you might not prefer, or the safety norms laid by the authority of your area might restrict the number of people every day. So, expect team members to work from different places on the same project, which can very well lead to serious communication gaps.

According to reports, even smaller companies of 100 employees throw out an average of $420,000 per year due to miscommunication, and it is the last thing you want in your company in the current situation.

For effective communication that can ensure better team productivity get robust team communication software like flock, slack, chanty, etc., unless you are already using them. Zoom or similar robust video calling software should be installed in every office-computer along with the team communication software. You might need the assistance of server setup services to run more than one software on the cloud.

Re-adapting to IT infrastructure

It is only expected that during the long months of working from home, many of your employees would have started using new software for work, which might have helped them to deliver more efficiently. Asking your employees to abandon these newfound tools all at once might not be a feasible option. Also, you don’t really want to take away the tools that might have helped them to perform better, considering that WFH is not going to be a thing of the past, at least anytime soon.

This can be a critical point for the IT support of any company as using multiple new software can impact the entire infrastructure in more than one way, and all of them might not be positive. There needs to be a plan with the IT support team to handle such situations that will help to strike a win-win spot for both.

That said, it is also a fact that all new software-habits of your staff might not be welcome in the office, and your member of staff might need to reverse them and start using the same platform. Allowing different employees to use different software for the same task can lead to confusion and even more critical problems later for the IT infrastructure. So, taking proactive measures in an employee-centric way according to the set policies by the management is imperative. You can always get professional assistance from the IT services Australia to handle such situations.

Make it fun with technology

It is essential to understand that WFH naturally give people more freedom, and they have got accustomed to it by now. More to the point, the pandemic has not been ‘good’ on anyone; it has disrupted everyone’s life in some way or other. To improve employee engagement and productivity, implementing some light-hearted, fun stuff in daily culture is the smart way for now. Get help from IT to find some suitable between-work entertainment for your staffs.

Keep the above points in mind for enjoying the best IT support while your workforce slowly starts getting back to the office. For any assistance, you should look for IT services near me or get in touch with Coweso.