With the majority of the country now working from home, the days of phoning a team of IT support technicians based in your building with your daily computer niggles seem long gone. But now that you’re working from home, as well as, potentially, the rest of your workforce, what does IT support look like, without actual technicians in your house, and do you even need it?
Actually, what is IT support?
In its most broadest sense, IT support is assistance for any technology and technology-related services or products you are using, as an individual, business or organisation. An IT support technician’s role is to monitor and maintain your technology systems across your organisation, installing and configuring hardware and software, as required, to ensure constant, smooth running of your operation. And if there are any technical problems along the way, they will fix them.
Technology for homeworking
In many ways, the amount of technology you need to effectively work from home is likely to be more, not less. As well as the obvious hardware such as laptop or computer, webcam, adequate monitor, headphones and so on, you are likely going to need software, for instance for image editing, spreadsheets and video conferencing and most of all you’re going to need to be securely connected to your network and have sufficient broadband to support your functions.
The technology systems and setups for homeworking need to be as robust as if you and your team were all in the office. You’re going to need IT experts to set you up with all these, via cloud-based applications potentially, as well as monitor and maintain your systems, just the same as if you were in the office.
Security
Without proper IT support and backup for your important functions, it’s hard to see how robust your operation would be under pressure, particularly if there was a breach of security. For your team to be able to share and access files on your networks they need to have been set up securely, within full compliance of the relevant security standards.
Reporting and performance
Do you have adequate systems in place to know when your team are working and what they are working on? The right IT setup and support can ensure your overview of what your team are doing while they are working from home, as well as help them to feel properly supported via ready access to you and colleagues.
Data protection
Accessing, perhaps sensitive, documents via a network is likely to have impacts on your compliance to GDPR. Ask your IT support to ensure any new systems and procedures of working keep you well within GDPR so that you don’t have data protection-breaches to worry about on top of your other homeworking challenges.
Monitoring and assurance
While working from home, your systems should allow you to check that work, systems and processes are running smoothly. You shouldn’t have to just ‘trust things are done’. This goes beyond knowing your team are working, it means knowing that the work they have produced is of the correct quality. You should still be able to interrogate any aspect of your operation if you need to, to ensure critical service standards and quality are in place for your customers.
Reducing stress
Technical support and backup for you and your team, in what is likely to already be a stressful time, goes a long way towards everyone’s health and wellbeing. Responsive, friendly, approachable IT technicians who your team can call can be of huge comfort. You need IT support that lets you call for the little things too, not just the big disasters. For instance, someone to help you navigate MS Teams, or set up a Zoom call, can be of huge comfort.
Worries over IT issues that could be looked after by experts whose job it is to ensure you have full business continuity through your tech, gives you more time and headspace to concentrate on your work and your new work-life pattern. It might be a new landscape for working and the technology we need to do our jobs, but now more than ever we need the functions, backup and support that experts in IT support can provide.
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