Now more than ever, employees are keen to work remotely. An increasing number companies are embracing it, which is why Squad are launching their “remote expertise” project in their offices across the world.
Remote work is a truly spectacular tool to improve the lives and the performances of employees. Recent events have proved that statistically, employees working from home were equally as productive as when they were working from office.
It’s not just the end of long commutes and accumulated stress! Working from home benefits everyone, not just the employees.
WFH : a new way of working ?
From a company standpoint, remote working allows to drastically decrease lease costs, whilst keeping productivity high.
Certain large companies, such as PSA, have chosen this method of working, which is overall considered to be more “agile”, as lease/office space costs are the second largest cost for companies on average. Making remote work the new normal is a truly forward-thinking economic strategy, especially if you consider that the property sector was heavily impacted by the crisis.
At an international level, giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Shopify have also taken this road, transforming their work routine and making wfh possible until 2021, and in some cases, as a permanent option.
Upwork is a recruitment platform amongst the first to advocate “remote first” for all their employees.
In summary, working remotely is increasingly becoming a part of companies’ DNA, allowing them to attract and keep talent.
No more property costs !
They haven’t gone bankrupt, but many companies have still decided to close their offices once and for all. Why? They realised how much money they can save without the additional costs of renting an office space. According to the Sapiens Institute, that can equate to almost 50k Euros (81k AUSD), which is basically a year’s salary!
" I don’t know if @Instit_Sapiens are representative of the rest of the tertiary sector, but we have decided to close our offices and shift to 100% remote work, because we realised that physically going to the office is more a social ritual than an actual necessity."
So how do we balance the lack of “social life” that comes with wfh? Many companies have chosen to use coworking spaces regularly for meetings or seminars/workshops, which is radically changing work culture.
In addition, profiles such as network admins and cybersecurity professionals are becoming more and more in demand, especially due to the fact that many tools such as the cloud and instant messaging platforms rely heavily on their skills. Many companies are securing these exchanges of information, as a growing number of employees are becoming aware of the logistical side of setting up a remote-friendly working environment.
Squad are adapting to this new way of working
Remote working is great, especially for employer branding. However, remote connections can also mean it is easier for hackers to access them, thus posing a security threat, which is why it is just as important for companies to have the necessary security infrastructure in place.
Security awareness courses, securing workstations and encrypting data are all extremely important measures to take to protect your systems from attacks, especially on a remote basis. Any breach or any distraction from an employee with regards to protecting sensitive data can cost a company an average of 3.8 million euros (or 6.2mill AUSD) , according to IBM security.
Moreover, a recent study by CyberArk has found that a significant amount of employees still connect non-secured personal devices to company networks, which can be very risky for a company’s data security. These security issues linked to remote working are the reason why Squad also have security awareness training in place for employees, as well as training on good security practices when wfh.
During lockdown, we asked our Devops and Cybersecurity experts Ludovic and Jonas to tell us about their setup when working remotely. They told us they managed to continue business as usual thanks to VPNs and discord tool, and that they organise their time effectively by fixing daily objectives for themselves.
Thanks to Squad’s ISO27001 certification, the squad group and their experts can face even the most demanding of IT security challenges.
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