Editor’s note: AMTI, an information and communications technology company in the Philippines and a digital transformation enabler, is reaching out to small businesses with its budget-friendly WFH Business Solution Bundles. The remote work solutions are designed for micro, small and medium enterprises to ensure their businesses’ survival in the new normal. Below is their press release.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work or work-from-home (WFH) has never been a norm for local companies in the Philippines. It was not even an alternative for some due to concerns on business structure, employee productivity, and the necessary technologies.

But the pandemic and lockdown forced traditional companies to implement remote work to ensure their employees’ safety. To adjust to the situation, businesses were called to look into maximizing technology to shift to the WFH setting.

Enabling an effective WFH setup

The management and human resource department should work together to set policies that define the scope, expectations, responsibilities, and limitations of working from home. This should be done to achieve great results in terms of employee productivity and business performance.

The policies can be tailor-made to what best fits the company’s goal. These should also identify teams and departments that are eligible to work remotely, since the arrangement is not suited for all job functions. Management can also provide productivity metrics and effective communication and collaboration tools.

However, in this ongoing pandemic, guaranteed safety, well-being, and job security of the employees should be the priority—whether they work in the office or from home.

Bong M. Paloma, EVP for technology, sales, and marketing of AMTI, one of the most diversified information and communications technology (ICT) companies in the Philippines and a digital transformation enabler, shared the fundamental and progressive steps to enable WFH arrangements that are particularly suitable to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

Providing necessary devices

Companies should ensure that their employees are equipped with secured and suitable devices that enable them to be productive and get their tasks done as they would do in the office.

Providing company-owned devices, such as laptops, is better than letting employees use their own devices, since this could limit security and potentially open possibilities of any cyber threats or data breaches.

Investing in digital and software tools

Since remote working involves processes and communication done virtually, it is important to have the right and necessary software and business applications that enable automated processes, great productivity, and dynamic collaboration.

This includes an email system, office productivity tools, communication and collaboration tools, video conferencing, file sharing or storage tools, and an automated system—which can also be powered by cloud technology that allows users to access files or data any time and anywhere. Having the software and applications pre-configured when providing employees their devices for the WFH setup makes their work more convenient and efficient.

AMTI designed WFH Business Solution Bundles for businesses to quickly embrace and recognize the capabilities of WFH in simple approaches. The bundles, which are made affordable for MSMEs, include an email system, office productivity tools, online file sharing and video conferencing tools, and more. These can help even small businesses to aggressively keep up with the new normal and ensure their medium- and long-term survival.

Prior to the remote work setup, experts perceived that having a distributed workforce is the future of work because of the technology advancements and flexible work demands. But now, it is here—businesses are quickly transforming and adopting to it. The pandemic that caused the breakthrough of the acceleration of WFH is one for the books, but not all businesses have embraced the concept of it yet.

AMTI, together with Dell Technologies, helps companies with the necessary technologies, solutions, and approaches that enable working from home in their business and succeed in this period. – Rappler.com