Accounting, Bookkeeping, Payroll, Human Resources, Business Continuity

Management

Is Remote Work Putting Your Data at Risk?

As more and more businesses allow employees to work remotely, they must do everything they can to keep their data safe.

Our never-ending pandemic is taking its toll on businesses. The top concern, by far, is staff retention. In an effort to boost morale, many businesses are now allowing employees to work remotely on a permanent basis.

However, these companies are ignoring the number-one issue with remote work: data security.

Before you allow your team to work remotely, you must have policies and procedures in place to keep your data safe.

For instance, if employees use their personal laptops for work, you could require installation of antivirus/malware/ransomware and keystroke tracking software that’s supplied by your company. Or, you may have a policy requiring employees to use only company-supplied laptops or desktop computers which provide access to only business data and software. (Admittedly, this option can be expensive for small businesses.)

Whatever your policies and procedures, make sure all remote employees sign off on them. You might create an agreement like this:

ABC Corporation agrees to allow John Doe to complete all job duties and interaction with management and other employees remotely. In return, John Doe ensures that all data, documents, strategies, and client communications are handled in accordance with the goals set up by management. John Doe also agrees to restrict usage of the device to work-related tasks OR as agreed upon in advance by management. Furthermore, John Doe agrees that all company data will be safeguarded, and antivirus/malware/ransomware will be maintained as agreed upon. Failure to do so will result in termination.

This agreement may seem harsh, but your business is important, and you need to ensure that working from home won’t distract employees from keeping your data secure.

Now let’s look at the three most important considerations with data security:

  1. Hacking/malware/ransomware prevention
  2. Data control
  3. Data privacy

 

  1. Hacking/malware/ransomware

When analyzing antivirus software (I’ll refer to this as antivirus for simplicity’s sake, but it should also include malware and ransomware protection), pick a package that works well with your operating system, is all encompassing, and is easy to use. The software should also allow administrators (if you have a tech team) to control monitors and push updates without needing involvement from individual users. You’ll find plenty of packages that meet these requirements. The key is choosing a package you can afford and can scale as you grow.

The software should be installed on EVERY computer, not just the remote computers (data security breaches can happen anywhere!). If you don’t have a tech team, no worries; simply provide update and maintenance instructions to all employees, per the software’s recommendations. Check in periodically to ensure the software is working and is regularly updated as instructed.

  1. Data control

Data and information about your company, your clients, and your employees should be considered sacred to everyone in your organization. For this reason, I recommend you use data storage software. Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive (which comes with an Office 365 subscription) are inexpensive options that employ a redundancy model. This means that all your data is backed up to different servers. This prevents data from being lost or even hacked.

These storage software packages allow you to organize your data just as you would on your computer’s hard drive. You can create, edit, and review all data on your desktop, and once you save the file, it’s also saved on the storage company’s remote servers. What’s more, your folders can be shared with other team members of your choice, so you can collaborate with ease.

For an added layer of security, you can also request file encryption. And since your data is now accessible from the web, your data is safe from a ransomware hack.

By working with a storage company, you reduce the risk of data destruction from a bad hard drive or computer failure. That should be a huge peace of mind!

  1. Data privacy

Keeping a log of passwords and requiring employees to regularly change passwords should be in your remote procedures contract. Along with that, keeping passwords private helps keep your data private. It takes only one data breach to give your competitors an advantage or make clients question your loyalty.

If you take only one thing from this article, it should be that your remote employees are an extension of your brick-and-mortar office. You should expect employees to behave the same way at home as they would down the hall. You can ensure this by planning how you allow for remote working, communicating thoroughly with your staff, and holding them accountable. You can always hire an expert to help you with this.

By setting the stage properly for remote work, you’re setting the stage for a fruitful working relationship that keeps your team—and ultimately your customers—happy.

Is Your Technology Failing You?

Are you looking at your business’s new technology and wondering why you’re not getting enough bang for your buck? Well, the problem might not be the technology. Many business leaders want fancy apps to impress clients, increase efficiencies, lower COGS, and improve profits. This strategy makes sense and sounds easy. But human nature makes it harder to do. If it were that simple, there would be many more successful small businesses and self-made millionaires. So, what’s keeping us all from achieving success?

The use of emerging technology is nothing new. Technological revolutions have spurred new businesses—and improved the way we live—for millennia. These days, the convenience of mobile phones, apps, and the Internet helps conquer one of small business’s biggest hurdles: sales. These technologies have become the primary way to communicate, putting products and services in the hands of customers. But technology alone does not fix or improve your business. Instead, it’s the people and the processes you employ. Use technology to enhance your business, but don’t assume software installation is all you need. Without the proper controls and touch points built in, the software will do its job, but probably not exactly how you expect it to. 

Software integrations have many components because every business is different and most “shrink wrap” software is designed towards the middle of your market. You may need to test the software to make sure it can handle what you need it to do. If it can’t, you can invest in customization. To make the transition to automation easier and seamless, it makes sense to test the software under the typical conditions for which you need it. 

Analyze your processes and procedures in which you’ll use the software. Most likely, you’ll have to change your processes to include the functionality of the software. For instance, a process that’s mostly paper-based must change a great deal once automation is introduced. To a small business automation can be transformative, but such automation should be planned and accompanied by a change in process, rigorous testing, and proper training so that your staff can work in harmony with their technology. If you don’t do the analysis, you risk buying software and paying license fees for technology that doesn’t decrease your work, but increases it. 

Basically, there are only two reasons to pay for software. One is to cut your expenses. The other is to increase profits. If you find yourself developing “workarounds” to accommodate your software, it will become problematic. If you have doubts, hire a professional. 

Are You an Effective Leader?

3 Tips to help you become a better leader…

The words “Leader” and “Leadership” get thrown around quite a bit in today’s world. How can you know if you’re a good leader? Three qualities effective leaders should have are Vision, Passion and Empathy. Let’s look at what makes these characteristics important to effective leadership. 

Vision

Vision could be interpreted as a concept that allows one to see far off in the distance. It almost sounds like science fiction! Vision, however, is not fictional but a very real superpower– it describes the ability to see possibilities. For instance, you could pick up a plain white globe and consider all the possibilities of what that globe could be. It could be a baseball, tennis ball, the Earth or another planet, an orange; you get the picture. A leader should have the ability to see many uses for an object, product or service.  

Effective leaders can envision what potential clients, partners and other stakeholders could look like. They have a defined idea of all aspects of success. They can tell you in a few sentences what they want to do and how they want to get it done. Vision and self-confidence go hand in hand. It’s much easier to be able to visualize an idea or concept when you are confident in your ability to make the vision a reality.  

Passion  

While vision gets people interested, it’s passion that keeps their attention. People tend to gravitate toward the confident visionary who speaks with positive energy about an idea. It’s no coincidence that speakers who are referred to as dynamic are usually very popular. People such as Dr. Martin Luther King and President John F. Kennedy were dynamic speakers. They were ambitious individuals who displayed vision and empathy when they spoke, but if not for their passion they would not have been the leaders they were. When you speak with passion, people want to be part of the positive energy.

Empathy  

While vision and passion get people’s attention, they’re not enough to make a great leader. It’s empathy that brings everything home. Understanding and relating to people is a natural trait of leaders. That doesn’t mean you’ve experienced everything that others have experienced. It means you understand that experiences can be considered hardships as well as triumphs. Identifying with people is the linchpin that keeps them coming back. Empathy is the link to building trust with an audience.

If you followed the last Presidential election, there were many examples of this. Joe Biden, talking about his plans to curb the virus, was empathetic to voters by identifying with them in respect to lost family members, hardship, and more. He admitted that the achievement would not be easy, but that he knew we all had what it takes to get to the finish line.

Experts have been debating this question for years: Are leadership skills teachable? Many experts categorize leadership skills as intrinsic to the individual and unteachable; others feel that a person can be trained to be a leader. Perhaps that debate will continue forever.  

Perhaps, great leaders are born, and great managers are also born. We certainly need a bit of both. So, what’s the difference between a leader and a manager? We’ll be sure to cover that topic in a future article.