The Best Hybrid (Flex) Working Options In a Post-Covid World

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Covid-19 has changed the working world, but now, with people starting to return to the office, at least part-time, it is setting us up for the next stage: flex work (or hybrid work), a situation where an employee will spend a few days per week at the office and the rest working from home. Why might this be a good arrangement? And what type of computer setup might make it work better?

Flex work enables workers to get the benefit of working in the office periodically, having the chance to see their co-workers in person and better utilize some office equipment, like printers and scanners, while still spending a majority of time at home and avoiding the grind of a daily commute. Additionally, from the employers’ point of view, they might feel that they need less office real estate and can reduce costs this way over time.

The ideal computer setup for a hybrid worker is likely to be a bit different from the ideal setup for someone who had been working completely remotely. While a good Internet connection is still important and security remains a concern that needs to be addressed, a hybrid worker is better suited to using a flexible, high-performance laptop for ALL work than a desktop computer which might have been used while working entirely remotely. From the employees’ point of view, it will be easier to travel and to work from 1 machine than 2 of them. The employer benefits from having to maintain 1 machine for each user.

Another option would be to establish a remote connection from home to the office computer using a remote access program like LogMeIN or establish a VPN connection and then use Remote Desktop.

NOTE: Grundig IT has LogMeIN licenses available that we will give away for free. The time to setup and test is 15-30 minutes. Contact me if interested.

In order to maximize productivity while at home and in the office, we would almost always recommend that the computer setup at home and in the office for a single worker be almost entirely the same: The same number of monitors of the same size in the same arrangement, similar keyboard and mouse AND and a docking station or port replicator to make it easy to connect and disconnect peripherals and move seamlessly between the 2 environments. While this will require a bit of additional monetary investment and time to configure, it will quickly pay off with increased productivity.

IT departments will still have to pay attention to security and the security risks that come with having a remote (or partially remote workforce). However, they should have addressed most of these issues already over the last year. As always, it is important for you and the company to make sure that all important data is backed up, regardless of where it is being worked on. We can suggest a good mix of backups that should be a part of the overall backup strategy.