What To Do When Your Remote Workforce Needs Computer Repair

For many businesses (and employees), remote work has been a godsend, while proving its value and efficacy as a viable means of productivity… particularly when certain health crises make gathering in the office an unsafe prospect. Recently, businesses have adopted somewhat-hybridized approaches to their work processes. While this is clearly a wise move for the business, it also opens the door for some otherwise unprecedented challenges.

Let’s focus on one challenge in particular: how to provide computer support to those who are working remotely, including those who are using a personal device to accomplish their work tasks.

If Working In-House Isn’t Foolproof, Remote Work Certainly Won’t Be

The hard fact of the matter is that IT issues aren’t tied to a specific location. A breaking piece of hardware will break in the home just as it would in the office. Malfunctioning software doesn’t stop malfunctioning once you’re no longer in a shared workspace. Your team members could find themselves struggling with their technology, whether they’re in your office space in Oneonta or at home in Otego.

Now, if you’ve read any of our blogs about securing remote work before this, a lot of this will be a review, but if remote work is to become a norm to any degree there needs to be certain safeguards and precautions in place.

Options to Simplify Remote IT Support

Let’s go over some of the options you have in terms of these safeguards.

Option One: Subsidize Their Support Costs

Many people have their own technology in their homes, allowing them (provided you have the proper defenses in place) to remote into your infrastructure with the devices they are most comfortable with. Of course, this will require them to have devices that are operational.

Therefore, if something were to happen to their personal devices, they would be unable to do their work. However, since they are committing a lot of its use to professional purposes, it’s hardly fair to assume that they should cover the costs of its maintenance and upkeep. Therefore, many businesses will offer a reimbursement program for their employees’ benefit when support and maintenance services are required. This helps the business to ensure that employees who are working remotely aren’t sacrificing productivity as they do so.

Option Two: Provide Equipment for Them to Use

Alternatively, if you prefer to keep company processes on company equipment, the mobility of a laptop makes it an ideal tool to enable remote work. This is why many businesses have elected to provide their team members with devices that can be taken home as needed. With business-owned devices, investing in their upkeep is a no-brainer for a business.

If a device does ultimately experience issues, it is far easier for a business using this strategy to swap out a troublesome device for one that works.  

Option Three: Provide IT Management as a Perk

We already have the tools to monitor and maintain all the computers and devices on your office network. We can extend that to home workstations as well. Historically, some of our clients would have us include service for the owner’s home PC, or a few key employees, and bundle that into their monthly IT budget. It makes sense, especially when the PC in question is really only used for work anyway.

We can cover some base protections on a user’s home computer, including managed antivirus, security updates, patches, event log reporting, and provide remote technical support when needed. There’s a lot of value in this, as our clients who have this for their office PCs will already know!

We can help you support your business’ IT conveniently and efficiently, allowing your business to accomplish more. Interested in learning more? Give us a call at 607.433.2200.