Not all Remote Working is Equal!

According to Global Remote Working Data & Statistics 2020, working from remote and home locations has grown 159% since 2005 - over 11 times faster than the rest of the workforce. With this in mind, we sit down in London to discuss the value of remote working, especially with the tools that we use. 

It’s true - not all remote working tools are born equal. Many companies say that they allow their employees and teams to work remotely. However, when we actually look at the tools they are given and the number of steps the employee has to go through in order to access documents or their emails, it's often quite cumbersome on the employee. Examples of this would be people who have to log into complex VPNs with multiple levels of verification on systems that don't tend to lend themselves to easily being able to login effectively. 

Overcoming Obstacles

Of course, another challenge to bear in mind is the restrictions that you can face on a mobile device. What we’ve found from our own experiences is that many companies - on the face of it - suggest that their employees can work remotely. However, the actual implementation of that often means that employees are left quite frustrated with their particular setup. With Google tools, we feel there's a good balance regarding security - and there's lots of examples of larger organisations and corporates using Google that would require very high levels of security (a good example in the uk is the Cabinet Office). 

Essentially, it's possible with Google to give the security that something like an IT team would require, whilst giving employees ease of access, both on tablets and laptops. For ourselves, when we’re travelling around, we see this in action - we can take our laptops out to work on the plane - and we love the handiness of offline mode. We can work from our mobile devices, and people who don't have access to all of the information they need to work don't really understand this until they see this in action. And we aren’t just talking about accessing emails - we’re talking about accessing documentation.

Promoting a Healthy Working Culture

Consider this: we’re not only able to access emails from our phones, but all the documents that we use on a daily basis. With things like drive priority in Google’s AI and machine learning, when we open up our Google Drive, the document we’re looking for is already being surfaced - another way for me to get the information I need much more rapidly than people using other tools or solutions.

If an organisation says that they allow employees to work remotely, that's great, and we want more companies to focus on remote working, whether that's for family time or work/life balance. We want companies to promote this culture in any form they can, and we think it's fantastic. 

It's also important for companies and IT teams to look at the tools they are giving their companies: what does it look like from an end user point of view? What does it feel like?Just try to look at it from their perspective. Do you think this is the most optimal way for employees to find information out of the office? If not, it may be better to find a solution that helps employees work more effectively. 

That brings us to the end of this week’s update, and it’s been a busy time for the team here at Damson Cloud. We’ve been travelling all over, meeting clients in London, as well as meeting with our friends at Cobry at their base in Glasgow. We’re in Leeds next week with the Cloudshed team, which will see us take a little break from our recent travel buzz. For us, it's been business as usual: with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) at our disposal, our productivity and connection to the rest of the team can remain, allowing us to stay productive while out of the office.

More About Damson Cloud

At Damson Cloud, we believe that Google offers the best range of tools for remote working - and we’re constantly looking at how we can contribute to the growth of this healthy working culture. Are you a remote worker? What tools do you use to find that essential information outside of the office? Let us know in the comments below, check out the full video with Fintan above and don’t forget to like, share and subscribe!

As a longstanding member of the Google Cloud Partner program, Damson Cloud specialise in bringing people and ideas together through new ways of working. We champion change management and digital transformation using some of the internet’s most trusted solutions, including Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), Happeo and Jamboard. To find out more about our services, check out our library of tutorial videos or our blog.