We have started to see a few bad work from home policies start to be implemented and would to take a few minutes here to update you on a few of them. Companies that previously laughed at the idea of working from home haphazardly threw together policies and hoped they would work. Here are a few which you should avoid.
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BDR plans do not cover work from home staff
Your Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) plan should cover a multitude of crises and can be adapted depending on the crisis that’s facing you. It’s never too late to make one even during a crisis, either. However, we have many accounts of BDR plans which did not count on a large number of staff members working from home.
It’s important to update your BDR plans with a set of clear remote working policies for protecting and storing data and bringing the whole company on-board to facilitate it, this can’t be left to a local manager’s discretion and must come from the top.
Ignoring VPN security and VPN’s in general
A working Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection is important, but you must know how to secure it. If your IT team hasn’t done this before it may be worth hiring some outside help to assist them and provide an extra pair of hands. Going from everyone in the office to everyone remote will put a lot of strain on the teams that will facilitate this and it’s important to identify where you can get help if you need more manpower or experience.
We have also seen some situations which were not desirable at all, such as opening direct Internet connections to internal resources. You may feel that “someone will never find this opening”, but they will – it is just a matter of time.
Unclear communication policies
In your work from home policies, you should also include expected business hours and whom to check in with as part of a chain of command.
Most employees would check in with their manager but if they are unavailable there should be a clear chain of command established because it’s important to know with whom to communicate. As mentioned before, be sure and leverage tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or Slack to chat via video and encourage your employees to use these tools as much as possible so their efforts are visible and staff is happy.
Work from home works, you just have to avoid a few of these bad work from home policies.
