The workplace is constantly evolving, and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this type of change. Currently, there are few organizations that do not practice some kind of remote work.
The COVID-19 pandemic, or the new Coronavirus, has made organizations around the world adapt to a new reality. In Portugal, teleworking has become mandatory for all employees who do not need to be physically at their traditional job and organizations have had to adapt, almost without warning, to a reality for the well-being of all.
Adoption of solutions
From one moment to the next, national companies had to adapt to a new reality.
Many had never implemented a remote work method, while others already had employees who worked from home. Few, if any, have ever had all of their employees working remotely.
In this sense, organizations had to seek and use collaborative solutions, video conferencing, or even devices that would allow employees to perform their duties, at the same time they need to be in contact with their colleagues.
Ricardo Magalhães, Enterprise Solutions Senior Manager at Noesis, points out that "there is clearly a difference between those who have already invested and adopted this type of solutions and those who do not yet have this degree of maturity or even solutions". At the same time, there is a "change in the organizations priorities". "What we see is that there are projects under implementation that have paused to make room for a shift - which is natural – for this urgency, that is to respond to employees so they can continue to be able to work. This is a reality that we see at national and international level," he explains.
Cybersecurity
The adoption of remote work solutions always raises cybersecurity issues. The fact that there are employees using crucial platforms to the organization, outside the physical space increases the risk.
In the case of this COVID-19 pandemic, these solutions have in many cases had to be adopted in a hurry, further increasing the risk of an organization suffering a cyber-attack that jeopardizes all company’s activities.
Future
Although we still do not know when this situation will end and how the world will be after this, one thing is certain: the way of working will be changed forever.
Taking the reality of Noesis, Ricardo Magalhães says that there are two different scenarios, where there is a strand of teams that work internally and others that work with customers, that are directly dependent on solutions that customers provide so they can continue their work. The internal teams had a very small impact.
"We already worked this way, remotely, with cloud solutions. In this situation, we just move physically; digitally we are functioning in the same way," he says. Anticipating the future, COVID-19 will oblige companies to look closely at this theme of remote work, which can lead to the paradigm "if this way of working is viable, then I will put my employees to work differently" as a hybrid regime, for example.
Opportunities for the Partners
Although by now many organizations have already adopted the necessary solutions to keep their operation going, there are still opportunities for Partners in this area of Workplace Solutions.
*Complete article published in IT Channel.
