Angeli is the Founder and COO at Workast. Her team ensures our users have an exceptional customer experience with Workast and takes care of all user issues.
According to Code42’s Annual Data Exposure Report, 98% of business leaders, cybersecurity leaders, and practitioners consider cybersecurity one of the top concerns with a hybrid work model.
To successfully implement a hybrid work model, your business needs to provide physical security to protect digital assets stored in your office, easier ways to manage your office space, and sufficient cybersecurity measures. Keep reading to learn about the top tools and technologies that facilitate a smooth transition towards hybrid working.
Here are some of the top tools and technologies that can help you manage a hybrid workforce securely and protect your data. These tools will help you address the top concerns when security planning for your SMB.
Access control is the foundation for a physical security strategy. When your workforce is working part remotely and part in-office, it becomes increasingly important to record which days your employees have visited the office. With different people visiting the office every day, it may be more difficult for your security staff to spot an intruder.
An office access control system allows you to manage who is entering your office space easily and won’t inconvenience your staff as they enter and leave the building. Building electronic commercial door locks can be operated remotely or using digital keycards stored on your employees’ mobile devices.
Access control readers can be set up to communicate with the user’s device using Bluetooth, meaning the user does not have to present their mobile device directly in front of the reader. This can speed up their entry and exit from the building, adding convenience to their daily activity in the office.
Door locks can be fitted internally in your building to prevent unauthorized users from entering facilities in the building that contain sensitive data. Internal door locks can protect your business from potential internal security incidents, a significant concern for some companies.
You can integrate occupancy management software with your access control system and internal door locks to provide an accurate and detailed picture of how often your facilities are used. When businesses switch to a remote work model, their office spaces are often used less frequently, and there could be potential for downsizing.
Occupancy management allows business leaders to better manage a remote team and evaluate the utility of their spaces by viewing data displaying if meeting rooms, communal areas, and offices within their building are helpful. If business leaders determine a need for downsizing, this can help them cut down on monthly overheads and increase their budget for essential business spending.
Communal working areas are becoming increasingly popular with the rise of hybrid working. They prevent personal offices from becoming wasted space and optimize the potential for collaboration when working in the office.
Since employees mostly visit the office for better collaboration in a hybrid work model, communal working areas provide a suitable working environment to facilitate communication. Perhaps if occupancy management helps your business identify a need for downsizing, you should consider investing in a communal office space.
When an office is working in a hybrid model, a task management app is very important so that team members know exactly what needs to be done. For teams that use Slack to communicate, Workast is the perfect solution to a hybrid workplace.
Workast is a task management app that helps teams to be more productive. Create tasks directly in a Slack channel. Team members know exactly what needs to be done, and managers get greater visibility of what their team is working on.
With Workast, creating tasks is as simple as posting a message into any Slack channel or direct message conversation. To create a task, simply type /todo and enter the title of your task — it’s that easy! Add details like an assignee, due dates, attachments and more.
Smart desk management is a powerful tool supporting implementing a hybrid work model. Smart desk management is software that allows users to book desk space for when they plan to visit the office.
When using a hybrid work model, your employees will need assurance that they will access desk space when they visit the office. Employees could become disgruntled should they commute to the office only to find no desk space. Smart desk management can help you ensure that your SMB’s productivity doesn’t falter due to poor office space management.
So, using smart desk management, you can provide a user-friendly interface for your employees to reserve desks for when they visit the office. The interface displays your office floorplan, along with which desks are available, which are booked, and who has booked each desk. This way, your employees can sit in teams or close to a friend when working in-office.
Since your team will be working remotely, it may become more difficult for your HR team to check in with employees. By integrating wellness verification software with access control, your employees can fill out surveys when entering the building. This can give your HR team a clear picture of employee emotional wellbeing and determine the need for employee wellbeing workshops, seminars, and wellness retreats to boost workplace morale and productivity.
With hybrid work comes the increased adoption of cloud-based technologies that could be vulnerable to cybersecurity threats.
A zero-trust security strategy is essential to ensure that only a limited amount of data is accessible on your employees’ networks when they work from home. MFA (multi-factor authentication) is a powerful tool to implement alongside a zero-trust strategy to ensure access to sensitive information remains protected from third-party interception.
Zero-trust does not infer the trustworthiness of employees and only grants them access to the data necessary for their daily working operations. Should an employee’s network become compromised, they will only access a limited amount of data. The zero-trust cybersecurity strategy also protects your business from potential internal data breaches for an air-tight policy.
Cybersecurity and space management are the leading concerns when switching to a hybrid work model. Luckily, these technologies can help you effectively manage and secure your office space to optimize the utility and security of your premises. Cybersecurity tools and strategies have become a top priority for businesses, and zero-trust with MFA is the foundation to ensuring data is protected from third parties.
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