Remote Computing Archives - NuTech Services LLC

Jul, 2019

Smartphones Role In the Modern Workplace

Smartphones are everywhere. You go to the supermarket, people are on their phones, you go to the gym, people are on their phones. Go into the office? You guessed it…you see a lot of smartphone use that may not be in the best interest to organizational profitability. The question becomes, do smartphones help or hurt business? Let’s get into it.

Smartphones in the Workplace

Let’s start with the trickiest bit of this first. Smartphones are a distraction, pure and simple. In fact, according to one survey, employees average about 56 minutes per day on their phones while they are in the office. This equates to a massive productivity leak for many businesses, but just when you think it isn’t equitably fair for the employer to pay for time employees spend scrolling through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, responding to personal emails, and browsing websites blocked by the company’s content filter, employers aren’t totally innocent in this situation.

The modern employer is the first person to take advantage of the computing prowess of these devices. Since the modern company tries to do more with less, many employers expect their workforce to always be available; and, that means always. Moreover, managers and executives aren’t any different: they are always on their smartphones too!

Some organizations feel the need to try and strategically design policies to keep people from using their personal devices for personal use on company time. These same people don’t have a problem with them using these devices for the benefit of the organization, just not for personal gain. This is where policies go wrong. They create archaic and completely unrealistic policies and are shocked when even their best performers can’t avoid their phones for long.

If you want your staff to limit their phone use at work, you have to make that clear. Some companies have implemented a policy that provides small breaks in which they can use their phones, but most companies have come to understand that this isn’t a trend and that phone use is part of day-to-day life. Locking down people’s ability to connect with the outside world for eight (or more) hours a day is only going to serve to bring negative reviews from your team, so your best bet is to embrace it, and realize that as long as your expectations have been communicated properly, most employees won’t take advantage.

Smartphones Out of the Workplace

While the smartphone may be a bit of a distraction to your in-house staff, what happens the moment people leave the confines of your business? They use their phone. In fact, I doubt very much if they make it out to their car or onto the train without a full assessment of the messages sent by applications, people, and others. How long do you last without checking yours?

This brings us to the point that needs to be hammered home. The more people use mobile devices, and specifically smartphones, the more they are willing to do off the clock for work. You don’t think this is true? If you are a business owner or manager, try texting, emailing, or messaging a member of your staff outside of work. They may not appreciate it, but more than likely, they will respond. This effectively extends them to “on-call”, a state that was typically reserved for people with jobs that the public depends on like doctors, lawyers, and the like. Now if you have a question about a project that just can’t wait until the morning, there is an excellent chance that you will be able to get the answer you seek directly from the person who worked on a task last. That can have a lot of benefits for your business.

What About Security?

Mobile malware has become much more prevalent than ever before–so much so that it can be a major problem for your business. The best way to mitigate liability from this is to design and enact a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy that takes advantage of cutting-edge mobile device management tools. Your staff may scoff at first, but if their two options are using their data or using your wireless network, they will opt in, guaranteed.

If you need some help ensuring that you are doing everything you can to take advantage of your staff’s reliance on their smartphones, we can provide you with all the information, resources, and technology you need to make employee smartphone use work for your company. To learn more, call us today at 810.230.9455.

Oct, 2016

Tip of the Week: Take Commuting Out of the Picture and Watch Productivity Soar!

Commuting to and from the office is a regular occurrence all over the world. In the United States alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average commute for the everyday worker is around 25 minutes. Even if this commute is necessary, it could be holding your business back from achieving its full potential.

Think about it this way; if your employees are on the road for an hour every day, that’s an hour that’s not being used for work, and an hour that the employee doesn’t have to themselves. It effectively adds an hour to the workday, but it doesn’t benefit either your business or the employee. This knowledge can be disheartening, but there are plenty of other reasons why a commute can put a damper on your bottom line.

Commuting Eats Away At Your Energy
How much time do you spend sitting in traffic every day on the way to work? This can be exceptionally frustrating and rage-inducing if you live in a metropolitan area. Any positive energy that you had when you left for work in the morning is completely gone by the time you get to the office, and when you start the day on a bad note, it can only get worse. Plus, longer commutes can cause health problems due to increased stress.

Commuting Causes Exhaustion and Sleep Deprivation
Even if the average commute for the United States worker is about 25 minutes, what about those who are on the higher end of the spectrum? If you have workers commuting 45 minutes or more, they could be losing out on precious sleep. When your team isn’t well-rested, mistakes can be made, and on a long commute to the office, they could even be putting their lives at risk.

Some organizations believe that remote workers are a liability and that they cost more than they’re worth, but the reality of the situation is that remote workers aren’t costing you money, and they aren’t decreasing your bottom line. If anything, they’re helping your business; remote workers don’t use your technology or your electricity, which means that you don’t have to provide them with the hardware required for the job, and your energy costs decrease. In an interview with Inc, Sara Sutton Fell, CEO of the job platform Flexjobs, states that 47 percent of her workforce works remotely, and this has saved her organization around $78 million. Even if you’re a small business owner, you can benefit from immense cost savings associated with remote workers.

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by allowing your team to work remotely. As long as you have the technology solutions to make it a productive environment, your workers and your business can flourish remotely. Not only will your employees be happier and healthier, but this improvement can lead to greater productivity and employee satisfaction that’s crucial to retain talent.

To get started with remote technology solutions, give NuTech Services a call at 810.230.9455.

Aug, 2016

Tip of the Week: 4 Easy Ways to Make Working Remotely Work for You

Working remotely is made much easier thanks to today’s modern technology solutions. Many organizations have at least part of their workforce working remotely, but without the proper support, remote work wouldn’t be possible. With the latest technology and a couple of best practices, the remote worker can be just as productive, if not more so, than the in-house worker.

Here are four ways that you can maximize your productivity while working remotely.

Have a Dedicated Office
In the office, you might have your own cubicle or workspace. However, when you work remotely, the world is your office. As long as you have Wi-Fi, you could turn a restaurant booth into your desk, or a living room into a home office. Yet, this can often lead to counterproductive or distracting circumstances. Rather than let these distractions take over your workday, you should instead invest in a dedicated home office, where you have plenty of space and privacy. This is the place you want to go to if you need to get pressing work done. This also helps you avoid busy public places, like restaurants.

Set Specific Rules for Family and Visitors
Working remotely means that you’ll need a dedicated workspace, and as such, you should keep distractions out of it; this includes family or visitors, who may drop in unannounced. You should set clear boundaries to when they can (and can’t) drop by. Furthermore, you should keep your daily chores to a minimum while you’re working remotely. It might be tempting to do the dishes or clean up a bit so that you don’t have to do it later, but you’re working remotely to do your job, not clean.

Work Until the End of the Day
Sometimes you might get the impression that, since you’re working remotely, you could cut out early at the end of the day and nobody would notice. While you might be right, doing so could become a slippery slope that could affect your daily productivity. Before you know it, fifteen minutes could turn into a half-hour, then an hour, and so on. Be sure that you don’t abuse the privilege.

Implement the Right Technology Solutions
Since your remote workers aren’t in the office, they’ll need the proper technology to do their jobs as if they were in the office. This includes making your infrastructure as accessible as possible, but not without ensuring its security. A virtual private network and Voice over Internet Protocol can help your remote team stay connected to the office. If your business needs assistance making your infrastructure mobile-friendly, NuTech Services can help.

For more information about how to keep your remote workers productive, contact us at 810.230.9455.

Feb, 2016

3 Technologies That Will Give Your Remote Workers the Edge

More businesses than ever before are finding value in allowing their workers to work from the comfort of their own homes, rather than have them drive all the way to the office to do a job that can be done from anywhere with an Internet connection. More importantly, it’s much more cost effective for businesses to allow for remote workers. How can you make it as easy as possible for remote workers to get their jobs done?

Wait, why would you want to let your employees work from home in the first place? A lot of it has to do with cutting utility costs and other expenses, like hardware purchasing and energy expenses. If your team isn’t in the office, you can save on electricity and (depending on your location) heat or air conditioning. Plus, when employees feel good, they’re more likely to work hard, improving the quality of their work.

Here are three technologies that can help your remote workers get the most out of their workday.

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
One of the most common problems for remote employees is that they need to access files that are stored locally on their company’s network. Since these employees aren’t based out of the business’s office, they won’t be able to access them in the traditional method. This can prevent them from doing their jobs properly, especially if there are critical files that need to be used for their daily tasks. A VPN allows your remote employees access to files on the company network securely. This helps to ensure that your team stays productive, without compromising your data’s security.

Cloud-Based Applications and Virtualization
The cloud allows for information and applications to be deployed via the Internet, which means that anyone with a stable Internet connection can access files or applications necessary to complete their day-to-day tasks. The cloud, in general, is a handy tool that can help you minimize your in-house IT footprint and improve data deployment, allowing your team to work from anywhere in the world that has an Internet connection; including on the road or on business trips.

Voice over Internet Protocol
Communication is yet another pain point that remote workers have trouble with. If your team needs to make frequent outbound calls, you want them to have a phone number that can be tied to your business. Furthermore, if you need to contact someone on your remote team, you expect them to be available through email, instant messaging, or via phone. With a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution, you can transfer your voice over the Internet, essentially providing instantaneous communication via both voice or video chat.

Ultimately, it’s your responsibility as a business owner to provide your team with the tools required to perform their daily duties, even if they work remotely. If your business is trying to achieve better operations via a remote workforce, contact NuTech Services, we can help!

Aug, 2015

What If You Never Had to Go to the Doctor’s Office Again?

Remote technology is so efficient and popular that it’s infiltrating many industries that you’d be surprised to hear about. One such sector is the healthcare department. Some doctors are taking advantage of the leaps and bounds made by technology to help their patients get back on their feet as easily as possible.

As managed service providers, our primary goal is to use remote technology to help users solve their IT crises. Similarly, doctors can use remote technology to diagnose and treat patients, much like how we do with our own systems. UnitedHealthcare, one of the largest health insurance providers in the United States, supports what WIRED magazine calls “telemedicine;” a video visit from a doctor who offers consultation services rather than an in-person appointment. As reported by WIRED:

United says it will cover virtual doctor visits offered through NowClinic, Doctor on Demand, and American Well. These platforms connect patients with thousands of doctors—albeit not the patient’s usual doctor—via video chat. These consultations typically cost $40 to $50 a pop, but now that United is covering these visits, members will only have to pay their usual co-pay, making virtual medicine much more affordable for more people. For now, these virtual visits will be available only to UnitedHealth’s self-funded customers, but the feature will expand to most members by next year.

So, remote technology is helping more people stay healthy simply by allowing them to access a doctor’s consultation whenever they need to. This makes it more convenient for not only the patient, but the doctor, as well. They don’t have to arrange for an on-site diagnosis, and they can avoid any contagious sickness easily enough. It’s simply a much more efficient way of doing things, and allows for more affordable healthcare in general.

In fact, remote technology is such a great tool that any industry can take advantage of it. We at NuTech Services perform most of our maintenance remotely. Managed IT companies use remote technology to ensure that a business’s operations continue to run smoothly. With the assistance of remote technology, NuTech Services can monitor your business’s systems for critical security flaws and administer patches accordingly. This helps us prevent damage that cannot be undone, like a loss of business data or personal information.

The primary reason remote technology is so useful for managed IT service providers is that your business avoids most on-site visits, eliminating the costs associated with them. This frees up a significant amount from your budget, and allows for more effective use of your IT expenses. Every time you opt for remote management and maintenance, you’re saving your business money. In fact, most issues can be resolved without an on-site visit. Granted, some hardware problems cannot be resolved remotely, so you can’t completely eliminate the costs of on-site visits; still, being able to mitigate them is often more than enough to make a difference.

For more information about how we can remotely monitor and maintain your infrastructure to optimize your system’s health, give NuTech Services a call at 810.230.9455.