MSPNetworks Blog

Many of today’s businesses span continents. That’s not an exaggeration. With faster Internet speeds fueling remote workforces, some businesses choose to strategically use workers from all over the globe to create and sell their products or services. In today’s blog, we’ll discuss some of the adjustments and alterations that you need to make when relying on truly remote teams.

IT support is essential for businesses, but traditional on-site support can be expensive and inefficient.

Thankfully, remote IT support, such as that offered through managed services, is now available. This is a game-changer for small to medium-sized businesses. Let's explore the benefits of remote IT support.

Many business owners considered allowing their employees to work from home like opening Pandora’s box; once opened, there was no going back. Unfortunately, for these administrators, they were faced with the very real prospect of losing their business if they didn’t allow it. Millions of people started working from home in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but now that public fear has diminished, how have companies reacted? Let’s discuss some remote work statistics to get an answer.

Mindset is important regardless of what someone is doing, but it plays an especially important part in the workplace. This only becomes more true when that workplace is distributed, and work is actually done in the worker’s home.

Let’s go into the kind of perspective you want to encourage in your team as they utilize remote work.

The workplace has undergone a dramatic shift over the past several years in favor of remote work, due in no small part to worldwide circumstances. In fact, many workers who would prefer to work in-office found themselves unable to, pushing the button on the topic of remote work even more. While there are some outspoken companies that want to see the return of in-office work, experts in the industry seem to be of the opposite opinion.

The numbers suggest that a hybrid workplace environment is the growing norm, and companies are adopting policies and procedures to put these accommodations in place.

Really, Not That Many Companies Are Pushing for In-Office Work

The news might report that various companies like Goldman Sachs or Tesla have labeled these efforts as a way to force out “uncommitted” employees; after all, if they can’t come work in-house, they shouldn’t be working here at all, right?

This isn’t really the case; it’s quite rare to see this happen.

In fact, the exact opposite is happening. More companies than ever are willing to accept a hybrid workspace. According to data cited by Prithwiraj Choudhury, one of the associate professors at Harvard Business School, approximately 30% of United States workdays are completed remotely and office occupancy has hovered at around 50%. The numbers don’t exactly represent mandating a return to in-office work.

Hybrid Efforts Can Be Designed for Specific Organizational Needs

You don’t have to stretch too far to see the benefits of a hybrid approach for business, particularly for its employees. The flexibility is helpful and can be a great boon for recruitment purposes. Granted, this is assuming that you can find a way to make hybrid work for your workflows. Your departments might need different things, and you might have to work with your staff to create in-house schedules for various purposes.

Ultimately, however, the flexibility offered to employees through hybrid work arrangements is such a value to them that they could truly thrive in these types of environments when given the chance to do so. Flexibility is sure to be one of the biggest requirements on the radars of highly qualified candidates in the near future.

Work with Us to Improve Your Hybrid Workplace Technology

If your business is ready to consider hybrid technology a priority, we’re ready to help! To learn more, call us today at (516) 403-9001.

One of the biggest arguments for remote work is that it poses environmental benefits, but how much truth is there to this statement? Today, we want to dive into the details and see if there is actually a solid benefit to working remotely—for the environment, at least. The answer might surprise you.

Remote Work Doesn’t Completely Eliminate Carbon Emissions

Remote work does remove the commute, and you’d think that this is enough to move the needle toward a more environmentally friendly working solution, but the answer isn’t that clear. There are other factors which also play into carbon emissions, more than gas mileage. There are numbers that could sway your opinion in either direction. On one hand, a look at April 2020’s emissions showed that they were reduced by about 17% worldwide compared to the prior year, but as you might imagine, those numbers have come up once again, even with people still working remotely.

Here are some other challenges which can complicate whether or not remote work is a more environmentally friendly approach.

Electricity

Even when your employees are working remotely, they are consuming electricity—just not from your office. In fact, their combined homes will likely use more electricity compared to your office. And how exactly is this energy being generated, anyway? Is it an environmentally friendly and sustainable way, or are the providers relying on fossil fuels? You can see how the answer gets a little murkier.

HVAC

The same thing can be said about heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. How much energy is being used to keep homes warm, cool, and ventilated, and how are these solutions being delivered? It’s easier for your business to control the office’s thermostat and impact the environment from one location compared to your workforce doing so from several different places.

Greater Hardware Needs

Laptops and mobile-friendly solutions are great for making your business more mobile, but if you haven’t already equipped your team with this technology, then you will have to procure it for them before the big shift to remote work. This means that there will be more waste created as a result of more technology being introduced to the world through the manufacturing process. And, of course, you can’t forget about e-waste, which is a big problem in its own right.

We don’t want to say that remote work is bad by any means, but whether it’s bad for the environment is actually up for debate, and the issue is not as clear-cut as you might think at first glance.

It’s Not All Doom and Gloom for Remote Work

There are plenty of great reasons to implement a remote work policy, but just understand that your primary one is probably not going to be to save the environment. A remote or hybrid work strategy can actually be remarkably effective, provided you have thought the whole thing through. MSPNetworks can help you with this step. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Remote work has seen unprecedented adoption in the past few years. While we’re all for the benefits that this trend brings, it is critical that any business that embraces remote or hybrid work does so securely.

Let’s discuss a few measures that your business can and should implement to achieve this security.

How to Secure Your Remote Operations

Let’s review some of the most key safeguards that anyone working remotely should have in place.

Use a Virtual Private Network

Which sounds like the more secure option to you: your organization’s protected and monitored network infrastructure, or your second-favorite coffee shop’s GENERIC-5G network, with password coffeebeans247 scrawled on a chalkboard for its patrons to use?

If you answered the latter, please give us a call right now, because we need to have a serious talk about cybersecurity. 

Of course a properly maintained network is going to be more secure, but what happens if you need to get some work done while you’re waiting on and/or sipping your macchiato? The smart answer is to use a VPN, which encrypts your connection and shields its contents from spying eyes, while allowing your team members to safely access the materials you’ve saved on your network.

The use of a VPN should be enforced wherever a remote worker happens to be operating from, whether that’s at home, away on a business trip, or if taking a working lunch at a cafe.

Only Use Approved, Secure Devices and Software

On a related note, it is important that wherever your team members might be operating from, they are using the right tools to do so. Unapproved technology being used for business purposes without IT’s knowledge or approval—given the ominous designation of shadow IT—brings a variety of issues with it. Not only do you not have any form of control over the device or the data stored on it, there are compliance issues to be considered. 

The same goes for software. If your team members aren’t using the software that you’ve designated they use, instead seeking out alternatives online and downloading potentially dangerous data packets, you are vulnerable to some serious issues and compliance concerns.

This makes it paramount that you provide your team with access and support for the exact tools you want them to use.

Maintain Your Equipment and Software

It’s also critical that the tools your team members are using are kept in proper working order, as this will not only make them more efficient, but more secure as well.

Your remote workers will need to have devices that are remotely monitored for threats and other issues, helping ensure that they remain secure even while they aren’t in the office under your watchful eye. The same goes for the software that gives these devices some direction—threats are actively being developed to undermine it, so it is important that you are just as diligent in keeping these devices up to date. We can use the same remote monitoring and maintenance software we use to manage your in-office devices to ensure your remote team is properly equipped.

Establish Basic Security Standards

We’ll never stop talking about how important it is for businesses to maintain their cybersecurity protections, and this importance is in no way diminished by remote work practices. More than ever, you need to ensure that your team is maintaining the cybersecurity standards you expect them to. Reinforce that they’re to abide by best practices—keeping an eye out for phishing, using secure passwords with multi-factor authentication, and others—and hold them to that expectation.

We’re Here to Help Businesses Operate Effectively and Securely, Regardless of Where Their Team Members are Working.

Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more about how we can assist you in making the most of your business’ technology.

Hot desking—the workplace organization method wherein there are no assigned workstations—has an assortment of pros and cons to it, but many companies are finding the more fiscal benefits to be worth the trade-offs. Let’s explore some of the pros and cons of hot desking, and go over a few tips and strategies that will help if you choose to implement it. 

First, let’s try to get a better handle on what hot desking really is.

Hot Desking is, in a Nutshell, Allowing Employees to Choose Where They Work Each Day

Instead of assigning each of your employees a dedicated workspace to use, a hot desking strategy consists of unassigned desks or shared work areas where team members come in and use what is available each day, or the work area they have reserved (more on this later). While hot desking isn’t practical for all departments in your organization—it isn’t as though reception can hide in a back office, for instance, and human resources will have needs that necessitate a devoted workspace—it can work quite well for many, if not most, of your team members.

This flexible workplace strategy brings about some real benefits…but it is important to also recognize some of its inherent drawbacks as well.

Pros of Hot Desking

There are a few advantages of hot desking that should not be overlooked:

• Cost Savings - With remote and hybrid work policies more common than they’ve been ever before, hot desking is one way to facilitate efforts to downsize your office space. Downsizing in this way leads to reduced costs in a variety of contexts, like utilities and insurance.
• Employee Satisfaction and Anti-Siloing - Speaking of remote work, hot desking in-office time helps by allowing your workers to diversify the colleagues they work amongst. Rather than a member of your sales team exclusively spending time with other sales team members, they can mingle with members of other departments and learn more as a result.
• Opportunity for Improved Collaboration - On a related note, this co-mingling between teams and departments helps to naturally encourage collaboration amongst your staff as a whole, helping boost productivity and outcomes alike.

Cons of Hot Desking

It would be insincere of us to neglect to mention some of the drawbacks of hot desking along with the benefits it presents, so:

• Challenges Finding People - Due to the flexible nature of hot desking as a strategy, it can become more of a hassle to track people down in the office. This makes those ad-hoc meetings harder to hold, ultimately slowing processes.
• Feelings of No Support - Interspersing members of different departments, with different responsibilities and work styles, can leave people feeling out of place and on their own. Plus, hot desking mostly eliminates the opportunity to personalize the workspace, leaving many less comfortable as a result.
• Unpleasant Competition - Without a fair and equitable system for your employees to use to claim a space to work, prime office real estate will likely become a point of contention for your team members. Furthermore, the different work styles we alluded to above can also create distractions between coworkers depending on the tasks they are assigned.

How to Manage a Hot Desking Workspace

If you’re interested in trying out hot desking in your office, we advise you to prioritize a few things (trust us, you’ll thank us later):

Document Your Hot Desking Policies

Obviously, this really applies to any business policy, but it is crucial that you comprehensively lay out the expectations and standards you have of employees who will be participating in a hot desking implementation. What responsibilities will these employees have? What processes will they need to follow? Setting a precedent in writing will help to reduce some of the drawbacks outlined above.

Set Up a Reservation System, and Zone Your Office for Different Needs

If hot desking leads to fewer places in the office itself to work, it becomes critical that your employees have a way to claim a workspace—otherwise, you could easily have days where there aren’t enough workplaces for your team to use. Requiring an employee to reserve a desk or work area ahead of time helps mitigate this issue.

You may also consider establishing different work zones for different tasks in the office. Whether someone’s work responsibilities might distract others or a group needs a shared space to collaborate, determining different areas to be used for different tasks can help cut down on friction.

Give Your Team Members a Space for Personalization

We discussed that a workplace devoid of any personal expression can lead to stress, and that hot desking makes this kind of expression more difficult. If you can, give your team members some secure storage space to keep personal items that can be displayed and put away each day. In addition to this, don’t hesitate to incorporate various customizable elements into each workstation—things like standing desks, adjustable monitors and chairs, and the like—so that each person is as comfortable as possible wherever they happen to be working.

Keep Things Clean

You’ll also want to enforce a clean desk policy while hot desking, just in case some employees neglect to take care of the space they’re using—after all, they might not be using it tomorrow. Provide cleaning materials, such as antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizers, and establish that your team is expected to use them.

It is also important that your team observe good data hygiene practices as well. Whether in physical or digital format, all work materials need to be properly stored at the end of the day. We recommend that the cloud is used to facilitate this, as no files are stored on the hardware used to access this data.

Use Technology to Your Advantage

Today, modern IT solutions exist that make hot desking relatively seamless, so long as they are implemented properly. Making sure that all of your technology, from your networking equipment to the workstation hardware to the software your team relies on, is in proper working order is absolutely critical.

Interested in Implementing Hot Desking? We Can Help!

Managed IT services, like the ones we provide, are ideal for modern office needs. Regardless of whether your team members are working remotely, in-house, or a mix of the two, we can help deliver the IT support and services your business needs.

With our monitoring and management capabilities, we’ll make sure that the technology aspect of your business is covered. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more about us and our services.

The past several years have brought about a shift in the workforce, and it’s not one that anyone could have seen coming. More people than ever before are leaving their jobs. How can you keep your employees engaged so they have a minimal chance of leaving their position within your company?

Here are some tips you can use to keep your employees from participating in “The Great Resignation.”

What is Driving The Great Resignation?

Several different contributing factors are involved, the result being 47.8 million voluntary job vacancies in 2021 alone. This was the highest number recorded since 2001, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022 will likely not be any better. In February alone, there were 4.4 million resignations in the United States.

This trend is not exclusive to the States, either. The social media posts about people quitting their jobs with the highest levels of engagement are from all over the world.

But Why Are People Quitting?

Some people who are leaving their positions joined during the pandemic, where remote work policies were in place and the people involved–those in the Gen Z age group, for example–are not interested in a commute to the office. On a similar note, many parents, some of them new, are finding that the time spent at home while working remotely helps tremendously to balance their home life responsibilities.

In fact, some are leaving their positions because they are being urged to return to the office, something which is simply not preferable for some workers. In this case, the needs of workers are being sidelined by companies’ needs to control their workforce. This has ultimately led to workers making sacrifices in their flexibilities and pay just to remain in a remote work environment.

Other reasons to leave might include poor workplace interactions and a lack of work/life boundaries. The Great Resignation has forced many people to look at their own priorities and to shift their focus to things that matter most in their lives, and work does not seem to be among them.

How Can I Avoid Losing People?

Simply put, you can do a lot of good by acknowledging that remote work is a possibility for your workforce, and it will do a lot to aid in employee retention. This will be particularly helpful to keep employees on both the younger and the older sides of the spectrum. You might even consider offering hybrid options if you can’t bring yourself to commit wholeheartedly to remote work options.

MSPNetworks can help you implement the technology needed to aid in this shift. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Unfortunately, cybersecurity is a lot easier to reinforce in the office than it is when your team members are working remotely—and even then, it can be a serious challenge to maintain. However, let’s focus on the remote worker’s situation for a few moments and review a few best practices that can help a remote worker stay secure.

Best Practice: Provide Them with the Tools to Stay Secure

When your team members are working outside of the office, they aren’t going to be protected by the security you’ve implemented into your business network—not without a few specialized tools in place. This is why your remote workers should have fully up-to-date antivirus solutions and virtual private networking (VPN) connections in place.

A VPN in particular is a great tool for a remote worker, as it allows them to access your business’ network from elsewhere without revealing their traffic and data to snooping eyes.

Best Practice: Emphasize Password Security Even More

Spend enough time with us, and you’ll likely be able to recite the advice that we repeatedly share regarding passwords—never writing them down, using a different password for every account, creating passwords (or ideally, passphrases) that will hold up to attempts to crack them, and many more tidbits. Remote employees need to be held to the same standards, and then some.

With your team members acting outside of your office, they aren’t sitting in an environment that actively reminds them to maintain their security standards in general, meaning that their password practices are apt to suffer. Working to keep these standards top of mind will be important for you to prioritize.

Best Practice: Reinforce Physical Protections

Cybersecurity practices go beyond password resilience and antivirus protections—you also need to consider your actual technology and the physical protections you have defending it. Keeping unexamined peripheral devices away from your work hardware, keeping your work hardware secured, and generally keeping it reserved exclusively for your work-related use are essential parts to your overall security posture.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg—there’s a lot more that can and should be done to ensure your remote workers aren’t undermining your business’ cybersecurity. Learn more by reaching out to us at (516) 403-9001.

It’s quite possible for employees to overwork themselves, even in a remote environment. Let’s take a look at some ways that you can minimize remote overwork for your employees, especially as the boundaries typically set in place by the morning commute are eroded and work/life balance blurs.

First Off: Yes, Overwork is an Issue

Countless issues and workplace challenges have bubbled to the surface in recent years, including others that are much more divisive, like wage inequality and racial imbalances. However, these issues are much greater and more difficult to address in this format, and overwork presents a different challenge to overcome.

Overwork is a very real issue that can impact your organization in several different ways. Employees can grow fatigued, anxious, and physically ill with symptoms like headaches, pain, and vision problems. Too much remote work can also impact interpersonal communications. Add in the emotional stress and pressure caused by the pandemic and you have many employees walking around like ticking time bombs. All of this can create the perfect storm for destroying even the best worker’s productivity and performance.

The question must be asked, what can we do to help reduce overwork?

How to Help Diminish Remote Overwork

You might not be able to visit each of your workers individually, but you can implement policies that can keep them from overworking themselves in general, and it all starts by thinking about things not in terms of remote work policies, but in-house and remote policies.

1. Support the Use of a Schedule

We are not talking about just setting up a schedule outlining work hours; we also mean that you should help them to establish a workday routine that is manageable. Be sure to emphasize the importance of starting and ending the workday at consistent and appropriate times, and try to reinforce this consistency whenever you can. This helps to prevent employee burnout and overwork.

2. Use Time Tracking Tools

Time-tracking tools can help your team and keep them from overworking themselves, as you can take a look at where all of their time is being spent at a glance. A visual reminder of where they are in their seemingly-endless pile of tasks can be immensely helpful. MSPNetworks can help you implement a time-tracking tool that will help your team stay on task and keep them from working themselves into the ground.

3. Encourage Your Team to Speak Up

Finally, you should empower your team to speak up if they feel their work requirements are becoming unreasonable. If they feel like they are overburdened or afraid to say no to more work, you need to know. Make sure they are comfortable coming to you about any concerns they might have so that you can address the issue at its roots without making it worse.

MSPNetworks can help your team implement the tools it needs to succeed. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Many, many companies have adopted remote work policies and practices since the COVID-19 pandemic forced most to downsize (if not cease outright) on-site operations about two years ago. Now, as we enter 2022, it seems a good time to reexamine the security that we have protecting our businesses and the workers currently operating remotely.

The Pandemic Has Shown Businesses How Well Remote Work Can Work

Despite the resistance that many initially had to the concept of remote work, it quickly proved to be a blessing for those companies that adopted it. Now, about two years later, its value has continued as it has kept a lot of businesses open and operational to some extent as infection rates have fluctuated. This approach has also proven popular amongst the employees who are participating in remote work efforts. A PwC survey conducted in August revealed that nearly a fifth of these workers would like to be fully remote, even without COVID in the picture.

However, for all the benefits that remote operations have provided to businesses, we need to address the elephant that snuck into the room with them: the cybersecurity challenges that remote work and working from home have introduced.

Unfortunately, Remote Work Can Provide Cybercriminals with Opportunity

Despite all the positive aspects that remote work has to offer a business, we can’t pretend that it doesn’t come with its share of challenges—specifically, in terms of maintaining an acceptable level of cybersecurity.

The reality of it all is that your team members simply aren’t going to have the same protections in their home as you should in the office, which means you need to do all you can to supplement the protections you have in place.

Security Issues Can Come from All Angles

Unfortunately, there are many factors in play that can unpleasantly influence your business’ cybersecurity. Not only may your team members be using their own technology to do their job, they’ll certainly be doing so on a network that you don’t have control over. As a result, this network will almost certainly lack the protections you have on your business.

Furthermore, as they’re working remotely, your team members are going to be on their own. This makes it that much less likely that they’ll be as focused on their security practices as they should be, and more exposed to threats as a result.

So, While Remote Work Can Be Valuable, You Need to Keep It From Making You Vulnerable

It’s obvious that you need to protect your business from any threats it faces…the question is how you can do that. There are a lot of practices and solutions that we recommend a business have its users adopt to help shore up these vulnerabilities. For instance:

• If an employee has no choice but to use a public Wi-Fi connection, make sure they are utilizing a reputable VPN (virtual private network) to secure data while it is being transmitted
• To help prevent employees from transferring data from work devices to private ones, putting together a Bring Your Own Device policy to help establish some control over the device and allowing them remote access to your infrastructure or using the cloud helps to secure your data.
• Password practices need to be upheld just as vigorously as they would be in the office. Not only do they need to be complex enough, they all need to be unique. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) should also be implemented to double-down on the security that accounts are protected by.
• Physical security also needs to be remembered when working remotely. Devices should never be left unattended in a public place, and it is not a bad idea to secure them in the home as an added safety precaution.
• All devices used for work, including the modem and router supplying wireless Internet, need to be kept up-to-date so that they remain secure.
• All remote users should be reminded of the threat that scams and phishing attacks pose, with ongoing training and other awareness-enhancing activities being conducted on a regular basis.

Yes, this is a lot, but it’s all important to do to keep your business secure. We’re here to help businesses do so. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more.

For all its benefits, remote conferencing isn’t the easiest means of doing work for many people, as many have found out through experience. With businesses quite literally forced into this approach for some time now, employees are starting to feel the toll. Let’s discuss some of the impacts that long-term remote conferencing has had, and what can be done to minimize them.

Conferencing Can Be Stressful…

…although I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.

Widespread remote conferencing has been an asset for many businesses for over a year at this point, in many cases allowing them to remain open when they would otherwise have little choice than to close. As a result, many people have remained employed during a time when many simply have not had that luxury.

Of course, there has been a cost—a cost which, for many, has been deducted from their mental health.

Consider the implications that come with mandated remote conferencing: not only are your team members communicating primarily through a screen for most of the day, but there’s also a good chance that most of their social life has been digitized as well. It should come as no surprise, then, that conferencing can lead to something now commonly referred to as “Zoom anxiety.”

Named for the conferencing app that saw significant gains from this time in isolation, Zoom anxiety is more or less what it sounds like: nervous onsets and tics developing in response to perceived challenges and embarrassments while video conferencing. Whether you’re afraid of what your coworkers might hear through your mic, see through your webcam, or even not see or hear due to technical difficulties, Zoom anxiety can have some unpleasant impacts.

The Various Causes and Effects of Zoom Anxiety

Embarrassing oneself in front of coworkers, managers, and clientele isn’t a new phobia. However, with the tendency that many people have to let their guard down in the home, remote conferencing brings those fears from the conventional workplace into the home.

Consider, for a moment, the advertisements that the coffee brand Folgers has been running—where remote employees compensate for stressful situations caused by remote work with a cup ‘o’ joe. These ads, one featuring a woman smoothly using her mug to obscure her curious son from view and the other playing on the classic working-at-home-without-pants gag with brand-accurate red underwear, put a lighthearted face on very real concerns that people have developed.

Apple has taken a similar tack, showcasing their collaborative solutions by telling the story of a team of “Underdogs” who work through the stresses of remote operations to collaboratively build a better mousetrap (or in their case, pizza box).

Amusing as these ads may be to view as an audience member, many remote workers now understand that the anxiety these scenarios cause isn’t something that can be chuckled off—regardless of how funny it was to see Professor Robert Kelly’s kids crash his 2017 interview with BBC News.

This is particularly the case for quieter and less-extroverted employees, who would prefer to primarily be seen in the office, not so much heard. It can also be challenging for those who feel that the theatre of video collaboration puts the pressure on to perform more than they would in person. Many people have become overly aware of their own body language, distracting them from the substance of what is being said.

Numerous gendered issues have been shown to be exacerbated, with the too-common issues of women being spoken over or judged negatively for speaking too much, happening more frequently than in an in-person setting.

The casual office conversations that once fostered cooperation and even helped pave the way to better business relationships and advancement opportunities are gone—and we haven’t even mentioned the tendency for awkward silences to arise, only to be broken by two people speaking up simultaneously and immediately deferring the floor to the other.

Fortunately, these are ways that one’s anxieties can be quelled, regardless of whether they come from technical issues, miscommunications, or simple discomfort with the situation.

How to Reduce Zoom Anxiety

There are a few ways that you and your team can fight back the nerves that come from an overexposure to video conferencing.

Reconsider the Need for Video at All

Before you access a call, ask yourself how important it is for you to be seen in this meeting—or if video is even necessary. Sometimes, a simple call will do the job just fine, and won’t require your team members to put themselves on display.

Get Rid of the Mirror

One of the most common places for people to look while in a remote meeting is actually at the image of themselves that most platforms will provide… studies have shown as much to be true. As you can imagine, this can lead to employees stressing about their appearance and mannerisms far more than they normally would, adding to their distraction and distress. Encourage your team members to disable the self-preview feature in your chosen collaboration solution to avoid self-inflicted criticism.

Cover Your Camera

For privacy’s sake, make sure your team knows that it is okay for them to cover their physical camera. This way, they can enjoy their privacy until the need arises for them to be visible. A piece of tape or a small sticky note can suffice, but dedicated covers are also available for that very purpose.

Have Someone Take Point

One of the biggest issues that remote collaboration can bring about is the perceived lack of structure that a meeting has. Like we mentioned above with the extended silences and overlapped talking, it can be hard for people to gauge when it is the right time to speak up. Assigning someone to chair the meeting enables that person to direct the attention of the group to the person who is contributing.

Grin and Bear It

Finally, it is perhaps most important that everyone in your organization understands that real life is still a thing, especially when someone is working from home. As such, some background noise or other such interruption is only to be expected. Make sure you are open with your team about understanding the realities of their situation and work with them through it.

We’re Here to Help You with the Technical Aspects of Remote Collaboration

Of course, the most positive outlook in the world isn’t going to make your remote interactions any more productive if the infrastructure isn’t there to support them. MSPNetworks can help you acquire, introduce, and manage the solutions you need to take your remote collaboration to the next level. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to find out more about what we can deliver.