NOVUS Offers Assistance with Remote Work Plans

Novus is contracted through the IT Services Cooperative and was competitively bid by CRCOG. In responding to the coronavirus pandemic, many businesses and organizations are establishing plans for employees to work remotely. Novus staff is available to help with planning for this transition and are ready to assist you now with execution, if you determine that it is appropriate.
Here is some guidance and a few suggestions as you consider a remote work plan:
  • If you don’t already have one, create a clearly articulated remote work policy.
  • The 2 biggest challenges facing organizations in this type of transition stem from insufficient technology to fully support remote work and employee discomfort with a new way of working. Working away from the normalcy of an office can be quite challenging for people who are not used to it and suddenly thrust into it. To maintain productivity and morale, our experience has shown it’s usually well worth the extra effort to make remote work as collaborative and like work in the office as possible.
  • Towards making sure every employee can do their job fully from home, survey employees to understand what each currently has at home for hardware/software and connectivity. We can help with crafting a survey if you need it. The responses will help dictate the existing capability levels and help determine the least expensive, quickest-to-implement options for rapidly enabling a remote work program. For some employees, be prepared to invest in mobile hot spots or to provide stipends for upgrading internet access plans.
  • Involve a cybersecurity expert who can recommend the right type of secure access to your organization’s networks, data, communication channels, and applications. If time will allow for proper implementation and training, strongly consider two-factor authentication login instead of just user ID and password to access these systems.
  • Prepare quick-start guides for the use of new technology or features of existing software that need to be implemented such as Teams in Office 365.
  • Find technology mentors and early adopters in your organization who can help other employees and lead by example.
  • Accelerate evaluation of cloud solutions that are much more friendly to remote work than legacy or natively-developed applications running on premise-based servers.
Novus staff is available to advise and help work through the many challenges associated with a rapid shift to remote work.
To schedule a consultation, please contact your Novus site lead or Novus Remote Support (860.282.4200 – option 1, or  help@novusinsight.com ).
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