Many great inventions around the world occur as a result of crises. Wars have powered the development of technology, bringing us airplanes. Plagues accelerated the development of medicine, resulting in major drug advancement. After any crisis, the winners tend to be those who see all these changes as an opportunity rather than as a burden. Are you one of the future winners?
The term the new normal was coined to describe a major shift to remote work caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even today, this term carries a rather pejorative connotation – it feels as if we were forced into this reality. When the pandemic gets under control, businesses will face the decision: do they go back to the old ways, or do they make remote work part of their culture?
New normal – good or bad?
Remote work is doable but far from optimised. The biggest challenge with the new normal was that businesses were forced to adjust in a hurry and were, in most cases, completely unprepared. They had to adopt makeshift solutions, often in the face of organisational chaos, selecting options that were far from optimal but that could be implemented quickly. And if something works, even if not that well, it takes a lot of effort to replace it later.
The pandemic has also led to the growth of criminal organizations that specialize in cyber-attacks. Phishing is at an all-time high, ransomware is no longer a threat just to the biggest organizations and DDoS attacks are easily purchasable from the dark net. Combining the increase in criminal activities with exposure due to makeshift remote work solutions is a recipe for disaster.
The great opportunity
Businesses are facing a situation that brings amazing opportunities, which are not being explored. Before the pandemic, most businesses rarely allowed remote work due to the lack of secure infrastructure to support it, but also due to an old-school perception that employees needed to be controlled in order to perform efficiently. The new norm proved this theory wrong and now gives a remarkable opportunity for people to choose the style of work that fits their personality, preferences and lifestyle.
Once we get this pandemic under control, the new normal or rather the new opportunity will become all about giving a choice. Enlightened individuals and organisations will enable their teams to figure out the best ways to work safely together, no matter where and no matter when. leading to improved employee satisfaction leading to better work culture and more profits.
The great expectations
Without the right tools, however, the great opportunity could end up being the great flop. This is due to current solutions being far from optimal and often unsafe.
What businesses must do now, as we’re hopefully approaching the moment when we will be able to make the choice of where we want to work, is to make one last difficult step: throw away makeshift solutions and provide their workforce with tools that let them work efficiently and safely no matter where they are located.
And this is where we come in.
The new opportunity offering – BMIT Work
We’ve put in a lot of time and effort in analysing the makeshift solutions that businesses were forced to adopt. We’ve seen the problems that these businesses face and we’ve come up with what we believe are the best options. The BMIT Work offering is based on three solutions for different business requirements:
● Make it Work allows your team to work remotely with the tools that they already know and use every day. Businesses that choose this solution treat remote work as an option but are not yet ready to make a huge step away from the typical office.
● Work from Anywhere is a slightly bigger step, which aims to securely move your solutions to the cloud as much as possible. This solution focuses on the scalability of remote work and treats it as an integral part of the company culture.
● Work Securely focuses on the safety of your data. This solution is aimed at businesses that work with sensitive data and/or must meet strict compliance requirements. As part of this solution, we will offer you everything that is necessary to make sure that giving your employees a choice does not, in any way, hinder the security of your business.
Whichever solution you choose, the BMIT team has the right expertise and experience to make sure that your business takes advantage of this new norm.
This article was featured on the Times of Malta. Click here to view the article.