Guernsey Press

Lockdown has made firms realise benefits of working from home

BUSINESSES are expected to continue to embrace home working once lockdown has lifted.

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Resolution IT's Pierre Jehan. (28307666)

Client services director at Resolution IT Pierre Jehan said it will be interesting to see if there is an immediate rush to go back to the office or whether businesses take stock and think.

‘This unplanned global remote working has become a massive, forced human experiment with what we previously thought our working day should be.

‘With no other choice, businesses have suddenly had to adopt the technologies required for remote working when perhaps they might not have been considering them.

‘They’ve now seen the benefits and I think will continue to embrace them even when lockdown is over.’

Having the right technology has shown lots of businesses that working does not have to be done the way it was before.

Businesses have been given an insight into what can still be achieved and, as IT continues to develop, Mr Jehan said the way and where people work will continue to develop, too.

He said the company and many of its clients were already using technology with the capabilities to enable a relative smooth switch to remote working.

Since lockdown, more than 5,000 external calls have been received by its service desk with a range of queries.

‘In the first few weeks we definitely saw people realising they needed bigger and better hardware to work from home,’ he said.

‘The appeal of looking at spreadsheets on a 15in. laptop screen soon wore off and we delivered a lot of large screens and headsets to enable people to replicate the more comfortable office environment, especially when it became evident we would not all be going back to the office any time soon.’

They also noticed an increase in people needing IT training, including tips, tricks and time-saving processes for the technology sat in front of them.

A range of businesses and charities have also engaged with IT training sessions over Microsoft Teams.

Mr Jehan said almost all of their clients’ IT issues have been sorted remotely, but in the few instances where someone from the team has had to make site visits, Public Health’s social distancing measures have been strictly followed.

Logicalis CI highlighted the importance of having business contingency plans in place.

‘The difficult thing, particularly in Guernsey, is having a second site that is ready to go should staff need to split working, because it’s expensive.

‘I think largely businesses were not prepared for this because no one could foresee the sort of rules that would be imposed by the States of Guernsey in terms of social distancing and staying at home.’

The spokesperson said the business had seen an increase in supporting clients to set up home-working stations and enhancing security systems as many now relied solely on the internet.

‘Going forward I can see that businesses will push for better contingency plans as they rely heavily on digital access – particularly as the threat of a second wave of the virus looms.’