The survey, by Microsoft, indicates that employees would rather quit than return to the office full-time, showcasing a need for employers to at least consider hybrid options. This survey was conducted from October 7th, 2021 through October 15th, 2021, and it surveyed 2,046 employees and 504 HR decision makers in the United Kingdom. Whether or not these employees would actually quit is up for debate, but the fact remains that they feel strongly enough to answer a survey question in this fashion. Therefore, it is your responsibility as a business owner to take these feelings into consideration when planning your business model. Failing to do so might cost you talent in the long term, which could potentially be devastating to your workforce. While you can solve some issues through outsourcing, in the end, isn?t this the same as allowing your employees to work in a hybrid or remote setting? Here are some other statistics related to the study that you might find interesting: 36 percent of UK workers hired during the COVID-19 pandemic have never set foot in the office. 42 percent report that they have had trouble building relationships with their colleagues. 33 percent lack direction from their managers or supervisors. 24 percent claim that they have had trouble learning new skills and software. 23 percent fail to earn the confidence of their coworkers. 21 percent are not feeling the company culture. 36 percent of HR managers reported having difficulty with training new employees. 35 percent are confident that their employees have access to the appropriate information. Some of this might sound complicated, but it?s simply something that business owners need to work to understand and adapt to. Fortunately, the technology-end isn?t any more complicated than having internal IT. Whether or not your business chooses to offer hybrid or remote work options is your organization?s business, and it is a decision that should only be made after careful consideration of where your company currently stands in terms of technological capabilities and operations. If you are unsure if your company could stand to go with a hybrid or remote workplace model, we can help you make that assessment and/or assist with the implementation of technologies that would facilitate this process. Don?t let a hesitancy to embrace remote or hybrid work sink your big plans for the future. Get started today by contacting White Mountain IT Services at (603) 889-0800.

What is Encryption? We?ve all heard of codes and ciphers, like the Caesar cipher where you take the original letters and shift them a set amount down the alphabet. For instance, the Caesar cipher with a shift of nine could result in the following: ?Vjwjpnm bnaerlnb jan cqn bdyanvn xycrxw oxa j kdbrwnbb bnntrwp jbbrbcjwln frcq cqnra RC.? While it is a relatively simple thing to decode if you have the key to it, lacking the key makes it effectively indecipherable?or inde-cipher-able, if you will. Encryption works in effectively the same way? albeit in a far more complicated manner. Encryption software takes data and puts it through a complicated algorithm that scrambles it up, with a key provided to help unscramble it when needed. Until that time, the data remains private, whether it’s being stored or transmitted. Encryption can be used to secure a website, a hard drive, or an individual email. What?s more, it really should be used whenever available to help secure your data. When is Encryption Needed? Encryption should be utilized whenever sensitive data is involved, so whether your data is sitting in storage or is being shared via email, it should have all protections available to it? including encryption. Want help incorporating encryption into your business? protections? We?re here. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to discuss your needs and how we can help you meet them. We?re here to help you secure your business and its data.

?I Resolve to Put Security First.? Cybersecurity is nothing to take lightly. Today?s threats range from mild annoyances to company-ending data breaches and everything in between. As a result, a business that doesn?t prioritize its cybersecurity awareness and preparedness is working on borrowed time. Fortunately, there are a few relatively simple ways that a business? security can be vastly improved. First, there?s implementing and maintaining basic cybersecurity protections, like keeping your firewall and antivirus and other defenses up to date. Secondly, but just as importantly, you need to ensure your team understands how an attack might be directed towards them and what they need to do to stop it. Phishing and other methods of targeting the end user are still popular.  Third, your team also needs to realize that some of their own behaviors could easily leave your business more vulnerable, so they need to be trained up on best practices to avoid these kinds of behaviors. ?I Resolve to Make the Most of My Technology.? Your team will primarily rely on two sets of technologies: what you are currently using, and what you will adopt in the future. With the right mindset now, it is possible for your business to maximize both. For your current IT solutions, having them is only part of using them to their fullest potential. You also need to be sure that your team knows how to do so, which will require them to be trained properly with them. By identifying your core software and applications and committing time to team training and user education, your employees will be all the more capable of accomplishing improved outcomes through the use of their software. Looking to the future, it always pays off to watch for the newest innovations and promising technologies to adopt if and when the time is right. By embracing new technologies and methodologies as they come, you can help your team maximize the value of their time spent.  ?I Resolve to Encourage My Team?s Collaboration.? It should come as no surprise that, considering collaboration is seen as a priority for many, bringing your team to practice it more is an excellent priority for a business to take. Many modern applications are now built with collaboration as a major feature, making it relatively simple to give your team the tools to follow through. You just need to enforce the behaviors you want to see from them. Regardless of what your priorities are in the coming weeks and months of this year, we?re here to offer our assistance in achieving them through our comprehensive IT services. Start a conversation to find out how we can help by calling (603) 889-0800 today.

With Remote Work, Departments Have Become Somewhat Moot Here?s the hard fact of the matter: the concept of a department is unnecessary when people are no longer working side-by-side in a shared environment. Rather, the unified workforce somewhat dissolves into individual people working on their tasks and communicating with each other as needed. Of course, this is not to say that the tasks and responsibilities that each department assigns to its members have gone away. Sales and customer service will still need to interact with prospects and clients, while HR will still need to act as the bridge between management and the workforce. However, remote work has done a lot to remove some of the barriers that the concept of departments once erected between the members of a given organization. In fact, studies have shown that the businesses that have performed the best throughout their remote response to the pandemic were the ones that relied on cross-silo teams (groups of employees from different departments) and shifted their focus from how busy each employee was to how successful these employees were at achieving their desired outcomes. Other companies reported that the furloughs that many saw required them to adapt, with their remaining employees taking on new responsibilities and collaborating with coworkers they wouldn?t have otherwise. This has been exacerbated by the adoption of automated solutions and the need to create new roles that these new technologies bring with them. All in all, remote work and the conditions that encourage it have all contributed to teams that have more diverse skill sets and are therefore more useful in a flexible work environment. Of Course, Technology is Needed to Make Remote Work a Feasible Option Whether you want to encourage your team members to embrace the benefits of remote work on a regular basis, or simply want to enable your team members to work remotely when the need arises, we can help equip your business to sustain it. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to get started today.

It?s simply not enough to have technology without having someone who can effectively manage it. Let?s take a look at how transitioning to a managed service provider model can improve the way you use technology. Traditional Technology Management in the Office Your business? approach to technology management might be dependent on its size. Some companies on the larger side have a dedicated CIO who makes all of the important decisions regarding technology. Others have network administrators who handle this responsibility. Some businesses don?t have any dedicated IT support resources and instead have their employees perform necessary maintenance and management, but this is not the right way to approach IT maintenance. If you have unqualified and untrained employees performing maintenance, you might make potential problems even worse. Companies that need IT resources can choose to outsource the responsibility of managing their IT infrastructure to a managed service provider (MSP). Managed Service Providers A managed service provider is a great way to take care of your technology, especially if you don?t have internal IT resources. You essentially outsource the care of your infrastructure to trained professionals. Some organizations center their entire business model around this concept. You basically get an entire IT department without paying for multiple salaries or going through the hiring process, instead opting for easy-to-manage monthly payments. The Benefits of MSP Offerings We can?t possibly list all of the benefits of working with an MSP here, but you should know that some of the most notable ones include a hands-off approach to IT management, more manageable monthly payments, and genuine peace of mind. You can also rest assured that your organization has access to IT expertise as it?s needed. Our goal is to make working with your IT as easy as possible so that you can focus on your own business? operations. Get Started Today! Managing technology can be stressful, so don?t let it get the better of you. Let White Mountain IT Services help. To learn more about what we can do for your business, contact us at (603) 889-0800.