FINAL WORD
“
EMPLOYERS NEED TO
DEFINE POLICIES AND BOUNDARIES,
WITH HR AND IT TEAMS WORKING
COLLABORATIVELY TO CREATE
PROCESSES THAT PROTECT STAFF
AND BUSINESSES.
critical services can be brought on to the
platform as it scales.
Week one: Five priorities to
establish now
Getting your employees up and running
quickly and securely – when the office
is no longer an option – is a matter of
prioritisation. We can summarise this into
five key steps we believe businesses can
follow in order to establish a foundation
that delivers operational continuity in a
secure manner, both right away and as the
situation evolves.
Firstly, employers need to define policies
and boundaries, with HR and IT teams
working collaboratively to create processes
that protect staff and businesses. Few IT
teams will have the time or resource to be
thinking about who needs access to which
application or folders – they will want the
user to request it. This self-service model
can help determine if each user has the
appropriate security level to access the tools
and applications they require.
Having the right remote service access in
place is a starting point – ideal for some
Lorna Hardie, Regional Director VMware Sub
Saharan Africa
workers but others will need their laptop and
carry on working as they do in the office with
an Internet connection. That requires a level
of governance.
In the rush to transition workers, there can
be a pressure to deploy new tools without
proper consideration for the implications,
which could pose security risks whether in
the early days or months down the line.
If security is not at the core, then the rest
becomes void. Security threats are not going
to go away during this time.
Collaboration and having the ability to
communicate is also critical, both from
an operational continuity perspective and
maintaining company culture.
Finally, simplicity is king. It needs to have
a single point of access for all work – the
minimum amount of effort and technical
knowledge for employees to get to
what they need in order to do their jobs,
irrespective of device or location.
With immediate access to an entire
set of business applications with
seamless single sign-on to all applications
as needed based on job functions, intrinsic
zero trust security ensures that compliance
and risk are considered prior to granting
access to applications, protecting your
infrastructure and data.
A software-based digital workspace solution
can enable employees to be productive from
day one on their devices of choice.
It allows immediate access to an entire set
of business applications with seamless single
sign-on to all applications as needed based
on job functions. Meanwhile intrinsic zero
trust security ensures that compliance and
risk are considered prior to granting access to
applications, protecting your infrastructure
and data.
From the first weeks to the
months beyond
Having those priorities informing the
deployment of a digital workspace solution
means that organisations will have laid the
groundworks from which they can continue
to deliver. That means that over the coming
weeks, the very immediate requirement
of remote working will be replaced with
a need to formalise arrangements. As
employees become more comfortable with
their new normal, businesses will have the
opportunity to look at what was once a
challenge as an opportunity and see how
they can build on the benefits of having
distributed, connected teams.
For all workers, not just the office
It’s also important to remember that
discussions around location-flexible
working focus primarily on office workers,
yet for many businesses, this segment of
employees is just one of a number across
their workforce. Initially, for those on the
front line, not being able to come into work
has significant economic ramifications. As
well as using their digital workspaces to keep
those workers engaged with the business,
when sites do reopen, there is an opportunity
to redeploy on-the-ground staff with digital
tools and access to offer a differentiated
level of service and experience. Businesses
need to get the foundations right and
today’s reality of immediate need is making
that possible.
Navigating the early days to
maintain operational effectiveness
These are challenging times for any business
operation. Being able to give employees
and customers a sense of continuity comes
second only to keeping them safe. As
businesses explore ways of balancing the
two, remote working is coming to the fore.
All enterprises face a significant period of
uncertainty, which is why it’s vital that the
decisions they make now and how they
establish their organisation to work in a
decentralised, offsite system, provide the
foundations for whatever lies ahead and
provides an opportunity to future-proof
too. That means a digital workspace that
offers secure access to the applications and
services employees need, irrespective of
device or location. •
76 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com