10 Tips for Remote Working

This article discusses 10 aspects to consider for remote working.

We uncover the essentials for working from home.  We have had this working effectively for 7 years, and in the last 24 months have increased our hours of remote working dramatically.

A dedicated work space is essential.

• A separate work space creates a division between “at work” and not at work time.
• It lets other family members know you are at work and allows you to stay focused
• It is ergonomically healthy – 8 hours of the laptop while slouched on the couch each day will guarantee trips to the physio very soon.

If you are working from home you will want to increase the amount of work you do on screen so you don’t have to cart masses of paper back and forward and worse still don’t need to rely on the postal system.

A laptop connected to a 24 inch monitor is my minimum.  I actually connect my laptops to 2 x 24 inch screens and then often have 4 applications open across the 2 large monitors.

We are using PDF Xchange (by Tracker)  This piece of software changed our world like no other!  We make all sorts of notes on documents using our pdf editor. Obviously you take a copy of original documents before you start making on screen notes on them.

Click here to read my article “Nine tips to reduce paper in your office”.

Click here to read my article “10 tips to empower you to use Microsoft Word more efficiently”.

A good scanner is essential.  The scanners on most recent Multi-function copier /printers are sufficient so long as you set them up properly.  We also have a brother scanner that cost about $300 a few years back that scans most of our documents very quickly and efficiently.

Depending on how your data comes to you, you might just need one for the person collecting the morning mail or seeing clients.  Other situations each person might need a scanner.

Tips:

• If you can’t set it up yourself get some help!
• Scan to a central directory and then move from there on the computer.
• Watch the file size – you don’t want scans to be huge that will take up too much disk space and you can’t email them.
• We scan to a setting of 300 dpi

VOIP – stands for Voip Over Internet Protocol.  This means the phone service travels on an internet connections instead of the old fashioned means.

You can answer a VOIP phone from anywhere without additional cost.  In the meantime you can forward your phones to a mobile and/or have a virtual receptionist answer your calls.

Our Cisco phones have buttons to show when other people are on the phone.  This is really helpful.

We use SipTalk for VOIP phones and Sohovian for our virtual receptionist to professionally answer our overflow calls.

See my article on phones at https://cascadeat.com.au/enjoying-economical-phones/

One Note

We use Microsoft OneNote so we understand what all team members are doing and what is on their radar.  Having multiple pages allows us to add to lists and priorities for the whole team and individual staff without clogging up their email with internal messages.

OneNote is a pain to set up, but we love its functionality so much we suffer that pain.

Instant messaging tool

We use Google Hangouts – nothing client related goes here.

We use it to say things like “Good morning” ,  “going on lunch”, “Heading off for today” – “on my mobile to xxx” (which helps them know that they can’t put the current caller through to you.

There are plenty of alternatives in this space.

If you don’t have an office set up to see clients set up a relationship with a serviced office.  If you service clients in multiple locations you could have several meeting rooms to resource.

There are plenty of businesses who don’t want to have clients come to a home office for all sorts of reasons.

As an example, you could even book an office three or four half days a fortnight and then book most of your client appointments there.

If this is just a temporary measure during COVID-19, who knows you might give up your expensive office lease when it comes up for renewal!

If you need to Quickly set up a home office for COVID-19, Team viewer is the quickest way to go.

Pros:  

• very quick to set up
• you can subscribe by the month

Cons:

• requires a dedicated computer at either end
• you need to remember to blank out the remote screen so someone can’t see you work at the remote computer.
• free service will run out quickly if you are using it all day.

This is probably the trickiest to set up and most important.  If you are going to get paid assistance on only one part of your remote working set up – this is it.  This is the biggest area to consider and i will just scratch the surface here.

There are plenty of online services to consider – One Drive; Drop Box; Terminal Server; Hosted Terminal server;  Google Drive.

We have already spoken about Team Viewer- which is great as quick set up during COVID-19 but we don’t recommend it long term.

Things to be considered in this area are:

1. security for your data
2. who can access your data and when
3. does all your data download to your hard drive such as with drop box and one drive.  This can be a problem
4. how secure is your data from other people in the household of your remote workers

Pro’s and Con’s

In-house server with remote access

Pros:

• you have control of your data at all times
• controls user log ins
• map drives to your computer

Cons:

• expensive to set up
• you have to be responsible for backups – requires vigilance!
• needs ongoing technical support

Hosted server

Pros:

• you have control of your data at all times
• not as expensive to set up
• more robust

Cons:

• you have to be responsible for backups – requires vigilance!
• needs ongoing technical support

 

Google Docs

Pros:

• easy access
• quick to set up
• multiple people can edit a google doc simultaneously

Cons:

• online tools provide less functionality (google docs, google sheets)
• you need to download and upload docs to get full functionality of word and excel

 

Drop Box

Pro:

• easy way to share files

Con:

• to get full benefit you install on your local machine – which can take up a lot of disk space

 

Our current solution is

1. Windows server that controls log in and access to files
2. Fortinet firewall that controls access from outside our network – this replaces our modem
3. Company supplied laptops connected to our domain
4. secure passwords
5. no access from other machines
6. company owned machines to be used by company employees ONLY without exception.
7. all corporate files are saved on the server NOT laptops/workstations
8. multi faceted backup system for our server

When our server dies we will move our data to Amazon Web Services.

If you need a good consultant to help set this up I recommend Chris Herrmann of Far Edge Technology chris.herrmann@faredge.com.au 

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