Get the tech right before you work from home to escape coronavirus

The coronavirus outbreak has forced various companies and the government to allow employees to work from home. Though work from home as a concept is over a decade old concept, few companies allow it en masse.

It might also be a new concept for many employers and employees alike. While a large section of companies have their office apps on the cloud, few can handle 100% traffic which means this Corna break can cost them. Employees who are happy to save on travel time, might face technical difficulties and also spend a lot more time communicating remotely.

Problems that may affect remote working

Infrastructure problems for companies

Companies will have to set up infrastructure required to enable employees to work from home. This will involve setting up of new servers, increasing cloud bandwidth and investing in remote working applications.

To allow employees to work from home, companies may also have to invest in VPN applications that provide access remotely. At the same time, companies might also have to strengthen the security side of their business, to ensure their confidential information stays safe.

Applications may not work properly

The first issue that employees will face when using remote applications is learning how to use them. Most employees may not have used these apps earlier and the IT department will have to ensure all employees are trained properly.

For security reasons, some companies do not allow employees to work outside the intranet. Now, employees will have to use VPN to continue working and this may use more bandwidth.

Apart from having to learn how to use these new applications, they may also have to face outages as applications may not be equipped to handle the traffic.

Application may take time to load

While working remotely, applications take time to load and this time may increase further as the number of users grow. This will slowdown work and projects may take more time than usual.

Companies will have to decide which applications to use and ensure that the selected application can handle the increase in users.

Communication may take more time

When working from home, communication becomes harder. Using video conferencing apps help in staying connected with colleagues, this still takes more time than usual and may decrease productivity. This will have a bigger impact on projects which require close teamwork

Internet speeds

Having a stable internet connection at home will become an absolute necessity. Internet speeds will likely be affected in the coming weeks as more and more users start working from home and others start consuming more data to watch movies on streaming platforms like Prime Video and Netflix.

Most broadband offers have a limit on how much data can be used in a month and after the limit is exhausted, the data speed is reduced to 1 Mbps which is not enough to work remotely. To be able to work properly from home, you need good data speeds. We recommend getting a connection with at least 25 - 30 Mbps speed to stay connected without any issues.

See also:

Tips to work from home during the coronavirus outbreak

Best video calling apps for all those forced to work from home

Coronavirus in India — a visual guide to how the Covid-19 infection is spreading in the country