A Guide to Remote Work during COVID-19 | Constellation Research by Dion Hinchcliffe

© 2010-2020 Constellation Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
@dhinchcliffe @ConstellationR
A GUIDE TO REMOTE WORK
DURING COVID-19
1
What Your Organization Can Do to Ease the Impact of Coronavirus on Workers
DION HINCHCLIFFE (@DHINCHCLIFFE)
VP & PRINCIPAL ANALYST
CONSTELLATION RESEARCH
ZDNet
Executive Fellow, Tuck School of Business
dion@constellationr.com
MARCH 11TH, 2020

(cc) Creative Commons, 2010-2020. Constellation Research, Inc. Some rights reserved. #coronavirusbizhacks @dhinchcliffe

A Global Crisis Has Come
• The situation with COVID-19 is rapidly changing day
by day, even hour by hour
• Businesses, schools, and other organizations are
being impacted by a steady stream of new cases
• Plans for response are hard to create in this very
dynamic environment
• Coronavirus is leading to mandatory work/learn/etc.
at home policies around the world
• Organizations must take rapid — and often dramatic
— action to avoid disruptions and significant hits to
productivity / customer experience
• Here are the key first steps…

Challenges of Coronavirus for Workers
• It is unclear how long the crisis will last
• Worst case is probably home quarantines that may
last months
• Getting and keeping workers productive is a
challenge, especially for:
• Workers who were not already working
remotely
• Organizations that have never had remote work
as a policy or reality
• Ramping up remote work, deploying supporting
technologies, building the skills, and shifting culture
to make it as productive as in-office work

The Four Strategies for Remote Work
• Strategy 1: Create a safe and effective foundation for remote digital access.
• Strategy 2: Provide access to productivity, line of business applications, and
communications/collaboration tools
• Strategy 3: Develop and cultivate effective remote working skills.
• Strategy 4: Proactively foster a remote working culture and mindset.

Now for a Brief Advertisement for Usability
• Despite amazing advances in consumer tech world, most orgs don't emphasize the
importance of simplicity and usability
• Solutions most often chosen by those that tick all the technical boxes and/
or is the most trusted/cost-effective
• But if you want your investment in remote work to pay off, spend real time on
usability
• Recommendation: Pay special attention to whether the average worker
will be easily able to use your solution, as tools for digital access span the
range of complexity and user experience
• Recommendation: Put a strong emphasis on tools that are simple,
straightforward, and "just work."
• Recommendation: Do rapid lab testing of remote work scenarios +
configuration with all your leading worker personas
• The risk in not doing so is quite significant:
• Support costs for remote work will simply be higher, with less to show for it
in terms of preserving productivity, as workers spend more of their time
getting the solution to work
• Despite this, most orgs won’t do this because they are not accustomed to doing so

#1: Digitally Enable Remote Work
• For workers to effectively work remotely
they need the following digital
foundation:
• Internet access
• Device(s)
• Secure access to company IT
resources
• Pro tip: Essential accessories that
maximize the experience

Internet Access
• Many workers have good high speed Internet access
• But a surprisingly significant number still don’t,
especially in rural areas
• Compounding the issue is that entire families are now
working/learning from home or soon will be
• Creates significant challenges for video meetings in
particular
• Recommendations:
• Baseline what your workers will need and verify
your capacity and their (#RemoteWorkCheckup)
• Provide a simple way for a worker to test if they
have enough bandwidth, then multiply for number
of people at home
• Be prepared to offer hotspots and/or stipends to
upgrade connections
• Advise workers to hold voice-only meetings
• Anecdote: Even
residents in Silicon
Valley are telling me
that two people at
home can’t video
conference at times.

Devices for Remote Work
• Sufficient devices will be the largest single issue
and costliest remote work issue for some
organizations
• Particularly those who haven’t been
remote working
• Organizations must quickly assess if they can
effectively secure worker’s own devices (laptops,
tablets, and phones) for use of apps and local
storage of data
• Otherwise rent, lease, buy what workers’ need
• And do it quickly, the daily cost of inactive
or ineffective workers is very significant

The Great VPN Question
• For most of the era of remote work, the virtual
private network (VPN) was needed to safely connect
remote workers to internal IT assets on-premises
• Organizations that have largely moved their IT to
Software-as-a-Service (online apps) or the cloud will
have much less impact when shifting to remote
work
• There are a kaleidoscope of options available for
VPNs and the issues are complex, especially for large
organizations that have limited or no VPN access
today and suddenly need it
• Recommendation: Avoid a VPN if you don’t need it,
there are now faster, simpler options

Some Leading, Secure VPN Options
Number of IP addresses: 30,000
Number of servers: 3,000-plus
Number of server locations: 160
Number of simultaneous connections: 5
Country/jurisdiction: British Virgin Islands
94-plus countries
3 months free with 1-year plan
Number of IP addresses: 40,000-plus
Number of servers: 1,300
Number of simultaneous connections: 10
Country/jurisdiction: US
$3.99 a month and $48 a year
Number of countries: 29
Number of servers: 1,500 (1,200 virtual)
Number of server locations: 200 in 73 cities
Country/jurisdiction: US
$40 for the first 12 months
Full List on CNET: https://www.cnet.com/news/best-vpn-services-2020-directory/
Number of IP addresses: 300,000
Number of servers: 2000
Country/jurisdiction: Hong Kong
$3.33 a month for a 1-year plan, $1.65 a
month for a 5-year plan

The Virtual Desktop
• Today there are alternatives to VPNs that can
provide complete, end-to-end access to
enterprise IT without the complexity of setting
up a VPN
• Solutions with “all-in-one anywhere access”
allow any device or browser to get access to
enterprise IT and virtual devices

Upgrade VPN Policy to Remote Work Policy
• To save time, a good place to build out a robust
remote work policy is the existing IT policy for VPN
access, which usually exists and is often specially
signed by remote workers.
• All workers must now know and agrees to this policy.
It should consist of an easily understood statement
that covers at a minimum:
• Who is allowed to have remote work access
• How authentication is used
• Whether simultaneous VPN connections can be
used
• How long users can stay connected
• Virus protection policies
• It’s the users’ responsibility to be safe and
secure

The Hard Work of Remote Work
Recommendation: Work with the CISO, Chief Data Officer, and HR to mature remote work governance.

The Key Accessories to Improve Remote Work
• A webcam for web conferencing, if the worker's base computing
device does not have one
• 720P is the minimum acceptable resolution for quality
results, but that is usually standard now in most webcams
• A high-quality headset or headphones with mic
• While workers almost always have headphones, you'd be
surprised how many don't have good enough microphones in
their headphones for phone or web conferencing
• An "On the Air" sign
• Workers located at home or shared locations are at risk of
being disturbed during remote meetings by those around
them. Inexpensive On the Air signs with remote controls can
be purchased at Amazon
• Make a real difference in the overall quality of the remote
work experience during meetings
• For the budget-conscious, On the Air door hangers are also
available. The positive impact of using these signs to ensure
smooth communications is surprisingly high

#2: Provide Access to Apps and Data
• Ensure, via testing beforehand, through
the VPN or remote desktop that all line
of business apps work properly
• Work through issues of those that
don’t
• The same for communications and
collaboration applications
Key insight: The 100,000 person org has between
1,500 and 3,000 applications in all that run the
business. This scales down surprisingly slowly.
Even a 100 person organization will have 100-200
applications they rely on at least, many of which
will need to be used in remote work. Only about
20% of apps need to be available for remote work
to succeed for most workers.

Modern Remote Work Apps Make a Difference
• Address the shortcomings of remote work through new apps that can help
break down silos and isolation. Some examples: 
• Sococo - Provides chat, voice, and video that offers a virtual office overlay
which can be especially effective at making people feel like they're still in an
office. Workers can visit each other in virtual dedicated offices of their own and
shared meeting rooms by working like they would in a physical space.
• Mural - A visual collaboration tool that provides workers with shared artifacts
similar to a whiteboard, Mural gives people higher bandwidth and more direct
connection to their teamwork. Teams can organize on an online canvas using
lists, flowcharts, diagrams, frameworks, methods, and drawings to help them
stay aligned and well-coordinated.
• Status Hero - How is everyone and what are they doing? These are the
questions that this tool answers by centralizing the status of workers so that a
cohesive team picture automatically emerges. Status is pulled by the app both
by querying workers occasionally as well as pulling activity from other systems.
It then broadcasts major events and achieved goals automatically so people
have awareness of what's taking place with their colleagues and teammates.

#3: Develop effective remote working skills
• Teach core skills, especially in team and
enterprise-wide collaboration, to enable workers
to be more effective
• Techniques like Working Out Loud and Network
Leadership are particularly effective
• Use new just-in-time learning tools to boost skills
and remote work maturity rapidly

Be Acutely Aware of the 50 Foot Rule
• Workers that are not physically
co-located strongly tend not to
collaborate together
• Special care must be taken not
to lose this invaluable aspect
of teamwork
• Why remote working skills that
return serendipity to working
have great value

Working Out Loud: A Key Remote Work Skill
• A powerful and popular digital
collaboration technique, from the book
of the same name
• Encourages workers to take extra care to
be visible on the network and offer
frequent contextual updates on what is
going on locally
• It’s simple: Lightly narrate work
• Let stakeholders get involved early and
often (and contribute)
• Keeps network filled with useful business
information, status, and chatter
• Teach to all remote workers (takes 10
minutes)

Best Practice: Build Worker Skills Just-in-Time with Digital Adoption Platforms
• DAPs help guide people right within the context of the work task or process they are
performing
• Consist of on-screen guides and tutorials
• Collects information user behavior and missed opportunities.
• Insights and actions that can be extracted from that data to help optimize how people work
remotely while increasing the usage, employee engagement and overall value of remote
work investments

Best Practice: Use Work Coordination Platforms to Streamline Intangible Processes
• Processes that used to be visible and well understood will change and become harder to
carry out in remote work situations
• Use the emerging category of work coordination platforms that can bring teams together
around structured processes
• Provides a central tracking and management approach that is highly visible, measured, and
effective

#4: Create a Remote Working Culture and Mindset
• Top executives and line workers are least
likely to have the mindset to more openly
collaborate, engage, and accept help
• Recommendations:
• Teach network leadership skills
• Lead by example
• Storytell great example of
remote work early, widely, and
often
• Enlist change agents to
mentor, teach, and advise

Leadership for Remote Work
Network leadership is the ability to engage and drive influence at scale while
remote working. The Corporate Executive Board issues a report recently that notes
this is the most lacking skill in managers today as more and more work goes digital
Recommendation: Teach managers and executives this vital skill as soon as feasible.

Dealing with Disadvantages of Remote Work
• Many workers will find remote work very
isolating at first
• Others will not have the skills to be effective
• Especially managers, who don’t want to be
seen flailing around in front of the company
as everyone switches to a new way of
working
• Provide and scale up mentoring, support, and
just-in-time training

Software Vendors Have Created Support Kits
• Rapid pre-built accelerators in
your remote work efforts:
• Microsoft
• Smartsheet
• Dropbox
• Many others

What To Do Next
Get a professional remote work program assessment
Onsite workshop on latest remote work best practices
A remote work vendor? Get an evaluation and scorecard.

Join me and other innovators at
Join me and other innovators at 
Constellation’s 
Connected Enterprise
The Ritz Carlton, Half Moon Bay, CA | October 26-29, 2020| www.constellationevents.com
27

Dion Hinchcliffe
+1.202-538-0059
@dhinchcliffe
dionhinchcliffe.com
www.ConstellationR.com
Thank you.  
Any questions?

A Guide to Remote Work during COVID-19 | Constellation Research by Dion Hinchcliffe

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