{"id":1550,"date":"2020-03-25T21:08:37","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T01:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/?p=1550"},"modified":"2023-02-18T23:48:45","modified_gmt":"2023-02-19T04:48:45","slug":"4-areas-to-consider-when-transitioning-employees-to-working-from-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/25\/4-areas-to-consider-when-transitioning-employees-to-working-from-home\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Considerations when Employees Work From Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the effects of COVID-19 become our new reality, businesses that haven\u2019t traditionally embraced remote employees, may find it difficult to keep their operations moving.\u00a0 To make the transition less overwhelming, we assembled a handy checklist of actions to consider while adjusting to the new workplace reality.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1551 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/woman-sitting-in-front-of-laptop-3884406-300x203.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"203\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/woman-sitting-in-front-of-laptop-3884406-300x203.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/woman-sitting-in-front-of-laptop-3884406.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Organization<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Access your staff members and\/or roles that are able to work remotely, those that can\u2019t work remotely, and those where remote work may be possible with some modifications.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Conduct an employee survey to determine the availability of computers that can be used for working remotely, as well as availability to high-speed internet access.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Create company guidelines covering remote employees, including inappropriate use of company assets and security guidelines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Develop and conduct work-at-home- training for using remote access, remote tools, and best practices.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Select a video-conferencing platform for services, such as <a href=\"about:blank\">Zoom<\/a>, <a href=\"about:blank\">Cisco WebEx<\/a>, <a href=\"about:blank\">or Go To Meeting<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Develop a communications plan to involve remote employees in the daily activities of the organization.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><strong>Security <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Create and implement a company security policy that applies to remote employees, including actions such as locking computers when not in use.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Implement two-factor authentication for highly-sensitive portals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>If needed, confirm all remote employees have access to and can use a business-grade VPN, and that you have enough licenses for all employees working remotely.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><strong>Staff<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Institute a transparency policy with your staff and communicate frequently.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Check-in on your staff, daily if possible, to confirm they are comfortable with working from home. Find and address any problems they may be experiencing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Make certain each staff member has reliable voice communications, even if this results in adding a business-quality voice over IP service.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Don\u2019t attempt to micro-manage your staff. Remember their working conditions at home won\u2019t be ideal, and they will need to work out their own work patterns and schedules.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Create a phone number and email address where staff members can communicate their concerns about the firm, working at home, or even the status of COVID-19.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n<li><strong>Infrastructure<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Ensure that you have ample bandwidth coming into your company to handle all of the new remote traffic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Make sure you have backups of your services so your staff is able to keep working in the event extra traffic causes your primary service to go down.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You may need to adjust or expand this list to match the specific needs of your firm and the conditions affecting your organization.\u00a0 Use this list to get you started and to help guide you through the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the effects of COVID-19 become our new reality, businesses that haven\u2019t traditionally embraced remote employees, may find it difficult to keep their operations moving.\u00a0 To make the transition less overwhelming, we assembled a handy checklist of actions to consider while adjusting to the new workplace reality. Organization Access your staff members and\/or roles that &#8230; <a title=\"4 Considerations when Employees Work From Home\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/25\/4-areas-to-consider-when-transitioning-employees-to-working-from-home\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about 4 Considerations when Employees Work From Home\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-small-business"],"modified_by":"James E. Heyward CPA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1785,"href":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions\/1785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heywardcpa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}