The Work From Home Tech You Can’t Do Without
Harley Dixon The notion of ‘telecommuting has been around for quite a while. In actual fact, some job seekers actually rate this as one of the main perks that they look for in a job. In other words, if the employer will allow them to work from home permanently – or a couple of days a week – this might be the difference between taking the job and looking elsewhere.
However, this brings in additional challenges for the employer. No longer is he or she able to pop into an employee’s office to check up on something or to bounce some ideas off a team member on the spur of the moment. They are reliant on what the employee tells them has been accomplished.
This means that they have to have more trust in who they work for and the employees themselves need to have the added maturity and responsibility to monitor themselves and make sure that they deliver on what the employer expects them to.
However, the good news is that there is technology out there which allows team members to collaborate, enhance productivity and get the job done – just as if everyone was in the office.
Stable Internet
This sounds like a no-brainer but without stable Internet, people are not able to work remotely. This is all fine and well if the employee already has a fixed Internet line at home, however, the trouble comes in with employees who don’t have access to this type of technology. In countries such as South Africa, where a large proportion of the population lives in townships which don’t have a proper communications structure, this becomes a serious problem. It then falls on the employer to make a plan in terms of connectivity to the Internet.
However, the good news is that solutions abound with technology such as 5G. Areas such as the European Union have already adopted proactive solutions towards 5G implementation.
Cloud-Based Productivity and Communication Apps.
The next thing that employees will need in order to collaborate with the team is a cloud-based suite of collaboration tools. The gold standard when it comes to this is Microsoft which has developed Office 365.
It includes the usual apps that you’d expect to find in an Office subscription – such as Word and Excel – but also offers video conferencing apps and online storage so that you and your teammates can work seamlessly together.
Google also provides a similar product – G Suite. It contains apps which pretty much fulfil the same functions as Office 365 with the added benefit that you can use third-party apps in your suite so that you can ultimately customise your environment.
There are loads of other tech out there, which is work-from-home businesses and freelancers can use in order to facilitate collaboration and communication. One word of caution: rather look at your needs, then your budget and finally look at what’s out there which will suit both of these. Unnecessary technology purchases can quickly add up.