REMOTE WORK — THE FUTURE OF WORK IS HERE
Remote work has been consistently growing over the past years, yet 2020 brought in the biggest ‘remote work big bang’ in history, fast forwarding its adoption years into the future and changing the way we work — forever.
By the end of 2019, aka in the pre-pandemic era, three-quarters¹ of knowledge workers already said they’d prefer to quit their in-office job for one that offers remote work. Soon 2020 ushered in the unexpected, with full lockdowns and office closures forcing organisations around the world into what can be described as a ‘remote work race’’. A sudden pressing need to switch to fully remote workforces, as soon as possible, to keep their flywheels running.
Of course that wasn’t easy for companies who had little-to-no knowledge on how to manage remote workforces and/or secure a remote IT infrastructure.
Today, almost a year later, the words ‘’working remotely’’ no longer sound peculiar even to the companies who least believed in it. Whereby, news headlines² of giant companies allowing employees to work remotely on a permanent basis feel ‘logical’, as opposed to how shocking they would’ve felt not that long ago.
In fact, 74% of companies today plan to make that shift permanent or adopt a more long-term remote work approach post the pandemic3. Also employees’ desire to have more flexible remote work arrangements4 is now higher than ever before. Hence, It’s safe to say remote work may become a huge factor in attracting and retaining top talent in 2021 onwards.
But why is that? The proven perks5 of this global remote work experiment must be so tempting to have both businesses and employees seek to maintain it on a permanent basis. Let’s take a brief look at the numbers:
Cost efficiency: 77% of executives state that working from home may mean significantly lower operating costs6. Also, nearly six out of ten employers identify cost savings as a significant benefit to telecommuting7.
Employee Satisfaction: 80% of employees note that remote work significantly reduces job-related stress8. Whereby, 50% of remote employees say working from home have reduced their sick leave days and 56% state that it reduced their absences9.
Remote Work Challenges
It’s not all hearts and flowers for admins and IT professionals. Managing a remote workforce can be challenging, especially when it comes to crucial things like measuring team productivity, understanding collaboration and optimising workflows — unless businesses use the right tools.
Likewise, scaling a robust IT infrastructure and guarding it with a powerful and reliable Cloud security tool is PIVOTAL. That is to protect businesses against cybersecurity hazards like external cyberattacks, data privacy breaches and other information security risks.
In fact, these TWO challenges may as well be the main reasons why some businesses were reluctant to adopt remote work until it became necessary — Now let’s dig a little deeper.
REMOTE WORK SECURITY
Cybercriminals love to prey on global trends like remote work to sharpen their attacks. The vast majority of businesses have witnessed a significant rise in cyberattacks since the pandemic began and employees started working remotely10.
But then again almost all of these attacks have something in common, it’s that they mainly target two vulnerabilities:
- Outdated security infrastructures
- Employee error
Employees are a vulnerable target as 48% of malicious email attachments are office files11, 1 in 13 web requests12 lead to malware and 92% of malware is delivered by email13.
Such data makes sense of course when a reported 82% of employers report a shortage in cybersecurity skills14 and 66% of security breaches are a result of employee negligence or malicious acts15.
Optimal cloud security starts with deploying powerful and reliable security tools, and extends to constantly providing businesses with valuable up-to-date knowledge to boost employees’ cybersecurity awareness.
Finally, damage related to cybercrime is projected to hit $6 trillion in 202116. That’s because hackers attack every 39 seconds, on average 2,244 times a day17.
REMOTE WORK MANAGEMENT
‘’How do we know that employees are actually spending their time on work-related tasks remotely? How do we identify time gaps and track things like employee productivity?’’— These are some of the main challenges that riddle companies when it comes to managing remote workforces.
While 75% of managers say they trust their employees, a third say they’d like to be able to see them, just to be sure18. However, traditional offices were never really the answer. Otherwise many companies wouldn’t be still asking these questions at their in-office premises to this day.
With 94% of today’s businesses already adopting some aspect of the cloud into their daily operations19, it’s never been easier to solve these problems using the right tools, regardless of employees’ physical location.
Supporting Remote Work Challenges
‘’Mobility’’ is one of the greatest gifts the Cloud has to offer. We place utmost emphasis on how the digital workplace works when building our tools. Our goal is to empower remote teams to work better together safely in the cloud, transcending all physical boundaries and security concerns.
SECURITY
GAT Shield: Offers a full view of every single Google Chrome browser interaction ALL in one comprehensive dashboard. It protects your cloud users by monitoring all activity and providing real-time Data Loss Prevention (DLP) on all sites, in all locations and at all times.
GAT Unlock: Takes security one step forward to help you gain control over your entire Google Workspace domain. Set up powerful security rules for Drive shares, access to sensitive documents and more. Better yet, receive notifications whenever any of these rules is broken.
ActiveID: Ensures that the user logged into your company’s account is in fact the user typing behind that keyboard — ActiveID uses a powerful constant identity verification technology that operates based on every single user’s unique typing style.
| Did you know that. based on reputable company surveys, only 5% of companies’ folders are properly protected – while every employee has access to 17 million files, on average20. |
Now you catch imposters instantly – instead of 206 days – which was the average time to identify a breach in 201921.
Important note: All of the above tools operate under the bigger umbrella of GAT+ — the main tool.
MANAGEMENT
Remote work requires a comprehensive view and control over everything happening and ‘moving around’ in your Cloud environment. Our tools help you achieve that. Find the right insights to boost productivity, understand collaboration and operate smarter.
GAT Shield: View every single Google Chrome browser interaction in one comprehensive dashboard. Explore things like the cumulative time spent on every chrome browser every day, time gaps, list of individual sites a cloud user visited and time spent on each one.
Management Assist: Track employee productivity and understand collaboration better using otherwise neglected data. Measure Google Workspace usage, browsing activity, calendar load, email time responses and much more.
GAT Flow: Simplify employee onboarding and offboarding chores using automated workflows. Time to let those repetitive time-consuming tasks take care of themselves.
TIM: Make your virtual meetings more time-efficient and productive using this powerful floating timer. Create time schedules and assign time slots to each meeting participant— TIM is FREE, because your time isn’t.
The GAT Suite Capabilities Summary
- Monitor employees’ cloud behaviour and productivity in the Google Chrome environment.
- Secure and protect your domain using the world-class cloud security capabilities of GAT Shield and Active ID.
- Maintain a 360º view over your entire organisation’s Gmail, Chrome browsing, Drive and any aspect of Google Workspace activity — Understand collaboration better.
- Gain control over your entire domain. Set your own security rules, grant permissions and get notified if rules are broken.
- Automate repetitive admin tasks such as bulk on-boarding/off-boarding, welcome emails and much more.
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