Using Technology to Communicate to a Hybrid Workforce
At Datapath we’re seeing a mix of working from home and from offices. Even with our own team, we have some team members working from the office while others are continuing to work from home for a variety of reasons.
Prior to the pandemic, only 7% of workers had access to remote resources to be able to fully work from home. In 2020, according to US News, at the beginning of the pandemic many workplaces saw as much as half their workforce working remotely in a home office. Employers now are preparing for 2 in 5 of their employees to continue to work remotely for the foreseeable future.
We’ve all experienced some form of the “Hybrid Workforce” over the past year. Meetings where a portion of the team members are in a room together, while others are on a video meeting sitting in their home offices or working from a coffee shop. Even communicating during a hybrid meeting creates a series of challenges that are more complex than a group of people meeting in person in a room together.
The same is true for continuing to communicate effectively to a hybrid workforce. The days of having your entire team in a room for a meeting to plan, update each other or just to connect are difficult if not impossible in the current environment.
At Datapath, we’ve worked diligently to find better ways to reach the workforce in its current form. As many of the methods we used previously are no longer an option, we’ve turned to using technology to help us communicate better internally.
Over the past year, we’ve used a series of different tools to help continue to update our team members with what’s happening at the company, continuing to acknowledge great work, while also, reminding team members that we’re not alone even though we may be working alone remotely.
With 74% of employees feeling like they’re “missing out” on company news, and over 60% don’t know what their organization’s strategy is - we realized working with a hybrid team would require more work than ever.
So, as awkward as it felt, we started doing company updates using video tools. We stumbled through tools for a while until we found one that was easy to use and made it simple for any leader to create a quick video update (including presentations). There are quite a few tools available, but we ultimately settled on using Prezi.
Regardless of the tool you choose, research shows that over 48% of employees prefer video over other forms of communication. In addition, videos used for internal communication have been found to improve the retention of the information shared over written forms of communication.
The cadence of how often you create and share videos depends on your workforce, but we’ve received tremendous feedback from our company with videos being shared every other week or even once a month.
2. Turn on 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication)
At Datapath, we don’t allow any tools or access to software internally to be accessed without an enterprise level 2FA tool. These tools create an additional method to ensure your identity, which is often done using a third-party application or text message.
Even if you aren’t ready to setup 2FA for all your applications, you can start today by using text code verification for many of the applications. For instance, if you’re using banking without 2FA setup you’re likely exposing your company to threats. Passwords alone are not enough to protect your critical data and many applications will offer text verification at a minimum or integration with 2FA applications (such as Duo, etc.).
3. Educate + Train + and Test
As sophisticated as hacking attempts can be, organizations can be even more exposed from the lack of education, training and poor decision making of their users. As mentioned above, incidents such as wiring funds from your organization’s account to the accounts of hackers is often due to social engineering attempts and users not being prudent in their decision making.
Keeping security top of mind is critical to ensuring users are thinking through decisions as they use technology. Security awareness tools help to education, train and test users to keep them on their toes and ensure they carefully reading through communication their receive that are requesting action.
A few ways you can start today:
If you weren’t expecting an email or message from someone, do not click on attachments or links
Turn on notifications for emails coming from outside your organization
Contact your banker about the options for setting up better administrative control over bank wires (turning them off or reducing them to a certain dollar amount)
Turn on dual factor authentication for all applications that contain critical information or services
Invest in a security training program for you and your team
If you’re a Datapath customer already and need help with some of the items above, reach out to your dedicated Account Executive. They’re trained and ready to help you start to tighten up some of these areas immediately.
If you’re not a Datapath customer, reach out to us at hello@mydatapath.com for more information.