4 ways small to medium Business Owners can manage stability working remotely and overcome challenges in Ireland

88% of employees would like to continue working from home after the pandemic and when all restrictions are removed according to CSO.ie. It is important to give guidance on how small to medium business owners can manage stability among their staff through reliable and fast connection.

While remote working has brought benefits, it’s also created challenges that cannot be ignored.

Top Tips: Hybrid working productivity in small to medium business

As a small to medium business owner, you need to overcome these challenges to build positive working cultures and ensure you can rebound in a changed landscape. Virgin Media Business has you covered in our top four tips to be ahead of the game.

1. Give them the right tools to stay connected

Even though employees are returning to the office there will be some employees especially in a small to medium business that will wish to work from home. With many of us working from home, small to medium business owners and managers will need to keep teams working together collaboratively and effectively over the long term.

While we’ve seen an initial outburst of hybrid working productivity in small to medium businesses, research suggests that remote working fatigue is setting in.

Tackling this fatigue is partly about showing compassion and ensuring workers don’t feel overburdened.

There is fear their employees are at risk of burnout due to longer hours when working from home.

So,what can you do as an SME Manager or Medium business owner do to meet your employees’ expectations?

Having good one-to-one conversations with team members is a good place to start.

Take the time to listen to concerns and remove barriers to effective working where possible before people become fatigued or overwhelmed.

Keeping employees motivated and engaged at home is also about giving them the tools to do their jobs as quickly and painlessly as they can. And one of the best ways of doing this is by upgrading your broadband connectivity.

Technologies like leased lines empower employees with guaranteed speeds for quicker file sharing, so they can collaborate better and get things done faster.

With upload and download speeds of up to 1Gb, you can keep your teams from being frustrated by slow connections. See our business fibre business broadband package without delay.

2. Empower your staff to focus on updated team building tools

Every business has had to react to the challenges posed by Covid which seems like a distanced memory now.

For your teams to focus on tomorrow and thrive in a fast-changing world, they need to be able to collaborate, think creatively and solve problems as a team. 

With a remote workforce, ensuring your small to medium business is fully agile and able to respond to unforeseen developments quickly could be more difficult. 

The answer here is again about fast and reliable connectivity. 

Not only fast and reliable connection is vital the Virgin Media SIP Trunking will have you covered for secure connection to carry emails, video and team instant messaging.

By supplying superfast WiFi connections and building flexible and scalable distributed networks, you can keep your employees in communication – whether on desktop or mobile.

These networks can also support new and agile ways of working, facilitating virtual customer meetings, remote consultations or face-to-face sessions in larger spaces.

3. Give your people and customers peace of mind in cyber security 

Looking after employees during this uncertain period is also about giving them peace of mind. The Irish Examiner has reported an alarming rise in cyber attacks since Covid-19, while research by EY Consultancy group Global Information Security Survey 2021 found that 90% of Irish businesses have seen a rise in cyber-attacks.

These attacks have the potential to cripple your business operations and reputation, creating anxiety and fear among your employees. 

According to the review carried out by Deloitte, six in 10 Irish consumers would only make an online purchase if they were confident their data was secure.

You can bolster resilience by investing in the right networks – ones that come with robust protection and firewalls, giving your employees the reassurance they need so they can focus on helping you grow and rebound from this crisis.

4. Look after your people so they can look after your customers

Customers are at the heart of every business, large or small.

When employees feel engaged, motivated and together, there is a knock-on effect on the customer relationship, which has been redefined by Covid-19.

This shows how online channels have soared in importance. Customers now expect instant and seamless communication with brands.

But how do small businesses deliver this when everyone is working from home and relying less on face-to-face interaction with consumers?

McKinsey has recommended businesses invest in their digital channels, create agile capabilities to meet the fluidity of customer behaviour and build consumer journeys centred around care and concern.

To do this, you need networks that provide your business with greater flexibility and agility to meet customer demand after Covid-19.

Superfast connectivity is crucial to delivering seamless experiences without the risk of lags and interruptions, ensuring employees can take pride in delivering exceptional customer journeys.

With the changes a small to medium business owner can thrive in the face of these changes, you need to look beyond traditional broadband packages and towards solutions that provide speed, scalability, flexibility and agility. 

By making smart connectivity investments, you can ensure you’re empowering employees with the tools they need to flourish when working remotely. Change is inevitable. It is fact of life that SMEs and businesses have no choice but to deal with it. Be smart and embrace it.