While some companies started embracing remote work years ago, it wasn’t until the pandemic that remote working became the norm.

According to a June 2022 Mckinsey survey, at least 58% of employees surveyed work remotely at least once a week. Another 35% of employees work the entire week remotely. 

With the rise of remote work came many changes, most of which companies were unprepared to deal with. Communication, collaboration, and most importantly, IT support and management became difficult. Many companies invested in more tech tools to accelerate remote working adoption. 

While the pandemic situation has lessened, it looks like remote work is here to stay. In fact, it’s predicted that 70% of the workforce will be working remotely at least 5 days a month by 2025. This growth of remote working has completely changed how IT teams operate. It has led to more challenges, but it has also given businesses the perfect environment to transition and adopt new technologies.

Today, we’ll explore how remote work has changed how IT teams operate. 

IT-Related Challenges Caused by Remote Work

Remote working allowed businesses to continue as usual. However, the working arrangement presented two main challenges to IT departments. Here’s a quick overview of these challenges. 

Cybersecurity Threats

Remote working gave cyber security criminals a larger ‘attack surface’ to strike. First, employees had to do most of their technology set-up themselves and do it quickly. This situation increased loopholes for cyber-attacks. In addition, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) arrangements were quite common, especially for smaller companies with smaller resources and budgets. 

For instance, many employees used their personal laptops or computers to access work applications. This meant that employees lacked the extra layer of protection that company devices offered. 

All these factors in a remote work environment contributed to the global cyber attack volume increasing by 238% during the pandemic. With an upsurge of cyber security concerns, IT teams were on their toes trying to prevent serious cybercrime repercussions. 

IT teams had to ensure everyone’s devices, including BYODs, were up to date. They had to train employees on how to avoid malware and phishing attacks. In cases where attacks were inevitable, the IT team needed to settle everything in record time to keep the business running smoothly. 

Less Visibility, More Support Tickets

Almost everyone who worked remotely experienced at least one technical issue, leading to lost productivity and delays. What does this mean for IT teams in a remote work environment?

There were and still are more IT issues to resolve as employees work remotely. Unlike in-person working, remote workers do not have on-site IT support. This means that IT teams generally took longer diagnosing IT issues and providing solutions to these problems. Support tickets shot through the roof, and many developmental goals had to be put on hold as the IT teams tried to help everyone adjust to remote work. 

These challenges of remote working mean that the IT teams have had to change how they operate. Let’s explore the new norm of IT teams in a remote work setting. 

Here’s How Remote Work Changed How IT Teams Operate

Supporting Distributed Teams 

Before the pandemic and the rise of remote work, most companies had an on-site IT department that cared for a company’s needs. Employees in most organizations also worked in-office with a few hybrid working cases. Now, a majority of companies work remotely with distributed teams across geographic regions and timelines. 

Distributed teams make it more challenging to expedite IT support and management seamlessly. There are different time zones to think about, the challenge of enforcing virtual networks, and the expected increases in cyber-attacks in a remote setting. 

IT departments have yet to strike the right balance between providing support and being proactive about technology concerns and development. 

Take network issues, for example. With distributed teams, there are multiple network infrastructures to manage. In most cases, IT teams monitor networks and applications through multiple tools. A fragmented monitoring system is not only inefficient, but it can also cost the company huge losses in lost business hours, cyber-attacks, and lost employee productivity. 

That’s why you need an ‘always-on remote monitoring approach’ to keep your IT networks and applications running. Therefore, having a platform that can automatically monitor the situation and provide solutions is critical. This tool acts like your eyes across your distributed remote locations. 

In turn, you can ensure that networks and applications work as they should. Your IT team will also handle all inconveniences and network problems in real time, preventing any pauses in critical business activities. 

AppNeta for Better Remote Network and Application Monitoring

If optimizing remote network monitoring is your priority now, AppNeta might be the perfect solution. This network performance monitoring solution helps businesses have total visibility into the end-user experience, giving insight into how networks and applications of their remote workforce are functioning. AppNeta does so by combining active and passive monitoring, thus ensuring end-to-end visibility of the end-user experience no matter where or when workers log in. 

With AppNeta, you can be sure your workforce won’t miss out on vital revenue-driving business activities. AppNeta supplies your IT team with real-time, actionable insight so that they can respond and address network issues faster, ensuring essential operations are running as expected.

Find out how AppNeta can benefit your remote workforce and organization. Contact A&I Solutions today to schedule a demo.