Remote Working and Office 365

“At Microsoft, our top concern is the well-being of our employees and supporting our customers in dealing with business impact during this challenging time. For many individuals and organisations, Microsoft Teams video-conferencing, chat and collaboration are playing an important role in helping people continue to work and collaborate. By making Teams available to all for free for six months, we hope that we can support public health and safety by making remote work even easier.”

– Microsoft

Today, being able to work remotely successfully is more important than ever. In this unprecedented time all over the globe organisations are having to find solutions to enable working from home for their employees and ensure they have the software and technology in place to do so. It has been noted that over half of HR leaders indicate that poor technology is one of the biggest barriers to remote working in a recent Gartner survey. At Appetite for Business, we can help you get on track. To harness the potential of your remote working employees by putting a system in place that will engage connectivity, organisation and collaboration for a fully functioning digital work space.

Productivity & Collaboration

Implementing new technology has its challenges, and Office 365 is no exception. For most Office 365 subscriptions, there are a number of apps available to use automatically by end-users. This ensures business users have access to all the features needed to get the best out of the platform without overloading them with functionality or giving them access to features which would usually be restricted within your organisation. By implementing new technology, such as Microsoft Teams you would be alleviating frustrations with; access to materials and files, maintaining productivity levels, loneliness and battling the feeling of ‘over-commitment’ when working from home. Ultimately, you want to preserve the unified culture of the office and maintain open communication with all of your colleagues.

Microsoft Teams

Its important to establish a positive culture for remote workers. Working from home through Microsoft Teams allows you to communicate through relevant Teams channels, keep work organised and collaborate on documents remotely with your colleagues. Office 365 have a free version which supports up to 300 participants. It also offers guest access, one-on-one participation and group and video audio calls. As well as this, this free version of Office 365 also offers file and screen sharing. It also offers online document editing for increased collaboration. If your business requires more services, Microsoft are also offering a free six-month trial of the complete paid version. This includes and is not limited to full meeting offerings and workflow capabilities.

External Sharing & Security

Keeping on top of security when working from home is a top priority. Unfortunately, there is a chance that some less favourable individuals may try to gain access to classified information. Especially at a time when many people will be taking sensitive information home. External sharing is making content available either internally within your organisation or sharing externally with your partners, customers and associates. There are always risks associated with sharing such information.

Ensure your anti-virus is up to date and scanning regularly to look for any threats. Keep off any questionable websites that could have harmful malware attached and don’t open any emails that look suspicious. Suspicious emails from various companies or bodies are doing the rounds to entice you to open them.

Appetite for Business can help

At Appetite for Business we are currently harnessing all the benefits Office 365 and Microsoft Teams has to offer for us to keep the business running remotely, as smoothly as possible. As a business who works predominately through Office 365, we have the training and capabilities to work from home through Teams as well as continue our scheduled training sessions through online webinars. Having the right technology in the right place has benefited us to no end through this time. If this is something you want to put in place for your business, do not hesitate to get in touch. We believe that all businesses should enjoy using their management system for communication, collaboration and co-ordination. Harness the full capabilities of your workforce, no matter where they are working from.

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