Reflections on how remote work turned from a variant of workflow organization into something more and helped us and our clients learn four rather harsh lessons.
Over the past 3 years, the IT landscape in our customers' companies has changed significantly. With the help of technology, customers hope to get out of the next scrape with dignity. The experience of recent years has shown that remote work has become the only way to ensure business continuity, even for those organizations that did not believe in such a scheme of labor organization at all. After almost 3 years, since the first lockdowns, not all employees are ready to return to offices and many companies are forced to compromise with a hybrid format of work.
At the same time, the path to remote work for several companies could not be called simple. The first thing the companies faced was the unavailability of the infrastructure. It was easy to declare the transition to work from home, but it turned out to be difficult to fulfill. And if it turned out to be quite easy to organize access to e-mail and communication tools, then the setup for working with corporate resources outside the office did not happen immediately.
The second difficulty was related to the equipment. Limited supply at the initial stage of COVID-19 and disrupted supply chains, which we are seeing in some positions even in 2023. Customers who did not have time to make purchases at the right moment were forced to choose, either to buy not too liquid positions, or to wait indefinitely for the resumption of deliveries. Accordingly, the prospect of providing employees with everything they need to work from home or in a hybrid format turned out to be questionable.
The third challenge was the gap between technologies that would really ensure efficient and uninterrupted remote work, and the qualifications of users. It would be strange to require ordinary office workers to instantly adapt to new software. Therefore, VPN, VDI and unfamiliar software objectively hindered the work of the teams in full force. Accordingly, labor productivity when working from home reached an acceptable level after some time.
Next — cybersecurity. Remote work blurred the information security contours of organizations, so the CIOs were forced to solve the “task with an asterisk”: to give users access to databases and business applications with confidential information and at the same time protect them from outside intrusion.
Not always a simple experience of almost three months in isolation, we have compiled into four specific recommendations. When working with existing and new customers, we advise them to adhere to the following rules:
1. Give flexibility to the infrastructure to implement different scenarios of using IT services. Flexibility is the antifragility that Nassim Taleb spoke about. The infrastructure should be ready for any surprises from the outside. It is important to give it such an appearance that even a fire in the data center does not disable business-critical services.
2. Train employees. It's not just about the IT staff. It is important that ordinary users are sufficiently savvy in the development of new solutions and technologies. This will help to reduce the drop in productivity of teams in case of changes in their work formats, as well as when introducing new software.
3. Have reserves for emergency infrastructure restructuring. What it will be — money, equipment, a contract with an external contractor — is not so important. Often a quick maneuver is necessary to get away from the impact of external circumstances and ensure the stability of the IT component of the business.
4. Protect resources and data. Security is your reputation; the larger the company, the higher the cost of information security — this is normal. Sony, Garmin, dozens of other world-renowned corporations have suffered millions of losses from hackers and billions of reputational damages. Giving information to cyber criminals is like admitting your own weakness. The costs of information security have a constant upward trend. This is a given that we all must live with.
Even if we leave the pandemic behind the scenes as the main factor in the digital transformation of companies in 2020-21, remote work with us for a long time. Therefore, business owners and IT directors should be prepared for the fact that some part of the employees (possibly a large one) will remain working from home or in a hybrid format. So, transformations both at the level of technology and at the level of processes are inevitable.
Over the past 3 years, the IT landscape in our customers' companies has changed significantly. With the help of technology, customers hope to get out of the next scrape with dignity. The experience of recent years has shown that remote work has become the only way to ensure business continuity, even for those organizations that did not believe in such a scheme of labor organization at all. After almost 3 years, since the first lockdowns, not all employees are ready to return to offices and many companies are forced to compromise with a hybrid format of work.
At the same time, the path to remote work for several companies could not be called simple. The first thing the companies faced was the unavailability of the infrastructure. It was easy to declare the transition to work from home, but it turned out to be difficult to fulfill. And if it turned out to be quite easy to organize access to e-mail and communication tools, then the setup for working with corporate resources outside the office did not happen immediately.
The second difficulty was related to the equipment. Limited supply at the initial stage of COVID-19 and disrupted supply chains, which we are seeing in some positions even in 2023. Customers who did not have time to make purchases at the right moment were forced to choose, either to buy not too liquid positions, or to wait indefinitely for the resumption of deliveries. Accordingly, the prospect of providing employees with everything they need to work from home or in a hybrid format turned out to be questionable.
The third challenge was the gap between technologies that would really ensure efficient and uninterrupted remote work, and the qualifications of users. It would be strange to require ordinary office workers to instantly adapt to new software. Therefore, VPN, VDI and unfamiliar software objectively hindered the work of the teams in full force. Accordingly, labor productivity when working from home reached an acceptable level after some time.
Next — cybersecurity. Remote work blurred the information security contours of organizations, so the CIOs were forced to solve the “task with an asterisk”: to give users access to databases and business applications with confidential information and at the same time protect them from outside intrusion.
Not always a simple experience of almost three months in isolation, we have compiled into four specific recommendations. When working with existing and new customers, we advise them to adhere to the following rules:
1. Give flexibility to the infrastructure to implement different scenarios of using IT services. Flexibility is the antifragility that Nassim Taleb spoke about. The infrastructure should be ready for any surprises from the outside. It is important to give it such an appearance that even a fire in the data center does not disable business-critical services.
2. Train employees. It's not just about the IT staff. It is important that ordinary users are sufficiently savvy in the development of new solutions and technologies. This will help to reduce the drop in productivity of teams in case of changes in their work formats, as well as when introducing new software.
3. Have reserves for emergency infrastructure restructuring. What it will be — money, equipment, a contract with an external contractor — is not so important. Often a quick maneuver is necessary to get away from the impact of external circumstances and ensure the stability of the IT component of the business.
4. Protect resources and data. Security is your reputation; the larger the company, the higher the cost of information security — this is normal. Sony, Garmin, dozens of other world-renowned corporations have suffered millions of losses from hackers and billions of reputational damages. Giving information to cyber criminals is like admitting your own weakness. The costs of information security have a constant upward trend. This is a given that we all must live with.
Even if we leave the pandemic behind the scenes as the main factor in the digital transformation of companies in 2020-21, remote work with us for a long time. Therefore, business owners and IT directors should be prepared for the fact that some part of the employees (possibly a large one) will remain working from home or in a hybrid format. So, transformations both at the level of technology and at the level of processes are inevitable.