Should I allow my employees to work from home?
The pandemic has escalated the need for employees to be able to and their desire to perform their job or a subset of their duties away from the office. Should your firm allow employees to work from home? What are the risks of your employees working remotely? What considerations should executives consider when allowing some or full-time remote work? The truth is that this decision should not be made lightly or hurriedly. Your firm must have the correct infrastructure for employees to work remotely while maintaining the same productivity, reliability, and security that is obtained in the office.
The benchmark we try to use is that your clients and fellow employees should not notice a difference in workflow. This requires your phone system, data storage, and application systems all be compliant with your new workplace offering. Employees would need a secure way to access company data, applications, and use the phone system from outside the office. If your firm is still using locally installed applications for tax preparation, then they may need a vpn or a way to remotely access a computer from outside the office. The company will need to determine if the employee will use a personal or company-provided computer to work remotely. We strongly suggest firms in this industry have employees only use company owned devices so security and data compliance can be enforced.
Company leadership should also consider how remote work will affect company culture. Are only some employees allowed to work from home? Why can some and not others? Is it based on job title, duties, or seniority? The leadership should have these answers and put a pen to paper to create clear policies on how this will be rolled out. If a company is considering using remote work in only emergency situations such as pandemics or bad weather, what investments and procedures need to be in place BEFORE work from home is used? It should also be noted that remote work technologies can also be used in risk mitigation. Technologies can be put in place to enable remote work but that doesn’t mean they have to be deployed.
Companies will often ensure remote work is possible in the event of a building loss, power outage, or major weather event. Remote work is not going away, and firms should make sure they are aware of the benefits and the investment required should they consider deploying this option. We recommend that everyone at least have the conversation with their IT provider to see where their firm falls is remote work readiness.
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