What is a hybrid office and what does that mean to you as a business owner?

Good to see you again, my name is Peter Jobst and thank you for checking out our channel here today where we always are talking about things IT, and here’s something that a lot of business owners have been asking us: what is this hybrid office, what does the hybrid office mean for us? And we’re going to get into that today. But before we do that, please go ahead and support our channel by subscribing as a big help, and especially if you know myself and my team you always know we’re putting out good content here, and also don’t forget to like this video if you find it useful.

So here we go: what is a hybrid office? And what does that mean to you as a business owner?

Let’s talk about the definition of a hybrid office. So, a hybrid office is an office that you can work as efficiently remotely as you did in the office, and that’s what is meant by the hybrid office. One of the things we can do is, we want to ensure that our files are always the same. So with our file access, we want to have cloud-based file access, so that we’re accessing the same files when we’re at home on the cloud and when they’re in the office, it’s the same files and it’s seamless when you go back and forth.

The next thing we want to utilize is VPN access. VPN is a Virtual Private Network, and what this allows people to do is: when they go home they securely tunnel through into the office network and they’re able to access the systems that are like in a data center or in your office. And then when they come into the office they can access those same systems locally and they don’t have to use their VPN. And sometimes, you might find this, is that when a user has a VPN connection and it’s on a laptop and they bring it into the office, and you just want to make sure to remind everybody to turn off your VPN when you’re inside the office and turn your VPN on when you’re outside the office. The VPN is like a secure door to your network. When you open the VPN you can get through and if you’re already inside you don’t need to open or unlock that door.

Let’s talk about utilizing SaaS services. So SaaS: services that are cloud-based services, like databases- many companies have their databases on our cloud service
these days, and this is a really helpful thing for a hybrid office for the fact that when you’re at home you can connect to it and when you’re in the office you can connect to it.

So let’s also talk about your phone systems. Wouldn’t you like your employees to be answering the business phone while they’re at home, and for them to know it’s a business number? When your employee calls from their home you want to show up as their business number as well. And what we have been implementing these days is a voice over IP phone system, which is telephone over IP, it’s over the internet. And it’s gotten significantly better in the last three or four years and with better internet connections, and there’s a lot better services out there these days and they have a ton of features. One of the ones that’s really been useful during these times is having a mobile app on on your mobile devices that can answer that company line separately of the cell phone number that might be on that phone in the past, maybe somebody was calling your employee’s actual cell phone number, and then they have that number forever, and then maybe that employee left and then people are still calling that number. Now they can still have their mobile number, and they put an app on top of it, and that app is ringing the company’s main line and your employee can tell, okay this is my phone ringing or this is the main line ringing. They can also make phone calls as the main number and they can do that while they’re remote or while they’re in the office.

And the last thing that we’re going to talk about is time tracking. A lot of times, when people were in the office you knew they were in the office and it was easy to track their time or to at least confirm that they were there when they said they were. Now that they’re working remotely, you don’t always know if they’re checking in and checking out on time. And what we have been implementing for our clients is an online time tracking where you are punching in and punching out, and you punch in in the morning, you work until lunch time you punch out, finish with lunch, punch in, and end of the day you punch out. For us we are punching in and punching
out all the time. We use a product called Harvest and it’s been great for our business. After we implemented this, our time tracking became so efficient and so easy that our guys don’t even think about it anymore.

So I think that’s it for today on the hybrid office. I just want to give you that definition of what a hybrid office is, and it’s the idea that you can work as efficiently at home as you do in the office and that things are seamless and when you come into the office you have a space all set up ready for you and when you’re at home you have a space all set up and ready for you.

So thank you very much, my name is Peter Jobst, I’m your IT consultant. Thank you for checking out our channel and we’ll catch you next time.