According to Kyriakides, cloud communications are playing a vital part in making remote work actually work. Such solutions have allowed companies to quickly turn to remote work to keep their employees safe while keeping operations going without any major obstacles.
Kyriakides explains further that the current situation has created a great testing ground for the capabilities of remote work and cloud-communication use at a truly massive scale that could bring long-lasting changes about how we approach remote work and communication in business.
Digital Journal spoke with Nicholas Kyriakides (netTALK Connect) about who to best implement cloud-based communications.
Digital Journal: How fast is remote working growing?
Nicholas Kyriakides: The absolute fastest the world has ever seen. Even Fortune 100 companies have swiftly converted their IT team and infrastrure to support employees as they shift from their work office to home office.
DJ: What types of technology aid remote working?
Kyriakides: One of the most overlooked is providing employees working from home outside access to critical systems that were designed to only be used in a secure office environment. That requires VPN accounts and training to any employee who doesn’t have experience using them.
Communication technology is obviously key, especially since employees will lose “water cooler talk”. The best solutions provide all encompassing and cross platform tools that sync messages, voice calling and video calls on any device the employee uses. A new type HR training is also key to help employees balance and integrate a new type of “work-life balance”.
DJ: What are the main challenges with remote working?
Kyriakides:Working from home is usually very productive provided the employees have the right tools. What is hard to replicate is the “water cooler discussions”, brainstorming without a physical whiteboard can be difficult in a remote setting (although some online whiteboarding solutions exist). Sadly and unfortunately, because of this environment, I’ve heard of companies letting go of employees over a video call instead of the most honorable way, in person.
DJ: How can cloud communication solutions help?
Kyriakides:Simply put – remote cloud tools allow work from home – work from anywhere. The biggest help is keeping your employees safe while providing necessary communication tools to keep teams “virtually” intact.
DJ: Are there any security risks?
Kyriakides:We always fear accounts being compromised. The most critical risk is VPN accounts being compromised because as you can imagine, they could be “the keys to the kingdom”. Also, employees and companies as a whole have to make sure private communications remain private.
