Office? What Office?

As the UK heads into the weekend, under another national lockdown, parts of Europe remain closed and businesses in New York City maintain their remote working policies, some firms may be considering a move to smaller office space, or, controversially considering closing offices and going 100% remote.

We’ve seen a big increase in client and prospect enquiries around “Office-less” technology solutions and see this as a trend that will continue to gather pace.

The benefits can be great

It’s not for everyone, but an office-less operation can bring big benefits. Businesses with a 100% remote model are infinitely more flexible than businesses with a centralised office. By their nature, 100% remote businesses utilise cloud services for applications and infrastructure meaning every employee establishes its own remote office. In the event of another pandemic, or major incident (and with terrorism on the rise, this is more and more likely), firms with a distributed workforce and home working as standard will be less likely to feel the impact.

Alternative options?

The cost savings firms can make from not having expensive City Centre premises to maintain could make an office-less approach appealing. However, employees still need somewhere to meet investors, clients and colleagues. If the office is a store front for the business, how do you convey your value and status when you have no store front? Would budget be needed for flexible rented workspaces, hot desks, hotels or members clubs? I have just seen that our friends at AYU are launching Covid-19 secure shared workspaces aimed specifically at the investment management sector. A fantastic idea and one which dovetails perfectly with the office-less concept. The cost of ad-hoc desk or meeting space is unlikely to reach the dizzy heights of prime real estate.

Challenges of a global workforce

Much is made of the recruitment benefits brought about by borderless, 100% remote organisations. The ability to select staff from a global pool of high-quality candidates with no geographical constraints sounds appealing, but of course it is rarely as simple as it may seem. Firstly, not everyone is comfortable with the idea of permanently working from home, with no alternative. This may restrict the pool to those who are unfazed by the idea. Secondly, regulated firms need to consider the implications of permanent establishment if they are recruiting a global workforce. When key functions are performed in permanent establishments in different jurisdictions, there are legal, tax and regulatory implications in each of those jurisdictions. These should not be taken lightly.

If all these considerations have been taken into account and a 100% remote organisation is the right fit for the firm, then what do you need to consider from an IT infrastructure perspective?

Employee tools

Firstly, have you got the tools your employees need to do their jobs effectively? They need collaboration and communication tools, access to corporate applications and systems, file storage and print services as a bare minimum. Do you have a corporate portal or SharePoint site for company news and updates? How do you communicate with each other so that conversation flows and ideas are shared quickly and easily? Email is rarely enough. We find that a combination of tools works well, using an instant message or chat function like Microsoft Teams Chat or Slack works well for many clients. The auditable, secure nature of the tools mean that sensitive corporate data can be shared and discussed without concern, whilst the instant nature facilitates collaboration. VoIP solutions are ideal for remote teams, providing secure voice services which travel with the user. Many firms also need to comply with MiFID II which stipulates the use of auditable call recording and there are many VoIP solution call recording options available.

Secure access

When the employee tools are right, you should consider the way employees will access corporate systems and applications securely. With no office, there is no firewall, no centralised network, and no switch so you are probably connecting to public cloud services over the internet. Using tools and protocols to monitor and secure web traffic and endpoints will be essential. If endpoints (phones, laptops, tablets) are monitored and secured, the traffic flowing to and from those over the internet is secure, then you are better placed to identify and stop data leakage or breach. We offer clients a fully managed endpoint detection and response solution which uses AI tools to not only continuously monitor the endpoints, but also combine it with user behaviour analytics to predict, identify and stop suspicious or anomalous behaviour by an individual user. This will help enormously in the fight against insider data loss or malicious activity. A zero-trust access policy will also allow firms to ensure that any access requests meet all the criteria required, of who, why, where and how access is being requested. Policies can be set to an incredibly granular level across the organisation so that only authorised users, on approved devices, using secure networks, under the right circumstances, can access systems and data.

Many SaaS solutions often have inbuilt security so that users are protected regardless of where they are located and whether they are using a home internet connection. These can be further protected by taking the measures outlined above.

Compliance, policies and risk management

Finally, we recommend that firms should not only implement the right technologies but must completely update their control frameworks to encompass 100% remote working. Policies should be updated to account for “work anywhere” as standard. Risk registers should be updated to account for multiple networks and the unique risks presented by a remote workforce. Consider automating as many operational processes as is possible, to reduce human intervention and the margin of error. Users need regular interaction and training on company policies and culture, as it is all too easy to become disjointed, if everyone works as a solitary entity. Keeping the culture of a firm alive is more difficult when users are dispersed.

We have implemented office-less solutions many times now, so my advice would be that if you think it’s right for your firm, the technology and expertise exists to make it viable. However, getting rid of the office is not for the fainthearted and it will not suit every employee. Research we have run amongst our own clients has shown that most people would ideally opt for a hybrid working model, where they can work from home for part of the week, but have an office to visit too.

If you’re trying to decide whether to go back to the office at all, I might be able to help you with your office dilemmas, so do get in touch.