After studying business informatics I started as a consultant and after a few years I ended up at a media company. At this company, the policy was that you had a fixed workplace and were present in the office. Although a fixed workplace offered many advantages, I noticed that I liked it better to have different workplaces. It brought more knowledge and connection with colleagues.

Now a few years later you see the workplaces changing. Technology is playing an increasingly clear role in all layers of the organisation. I regularly organize an inspiration session for organizations in which I compare the “old office” with the “new office”. I assess this from three different angles. People, processes and location. I will take you through the story and show you why a “new office” will arise immediately and what will be different in the “new office”.

The old office

The ‘old office’ is an office where there are fixed workplaces and each employee has his own desk. An office with separate office space for a number of people per room. These office spaces have often already made way for a modern large space without walls. An open character to bring employees into contact with each other more easily, regardless of department. Driven by presence and visibility.

The new office

The ‘new office’ is a place where you can work regardless of location or time. This way of working was already presented by large companies such as Microsoft. Employees were given a laptop and you were allowed to sit at any desk. This way you could sit on another floor when necessary to jointly deliver a project.

Exceptionally or after approval from the manager, you could work from home. Of course if the work allowed it and you didn’t have to go to the customer. Still controlled based on presence and visibility.

By offering the smart online workspace, you could work anywhere with your laptop regardless of location and time. But you often still came to the office for meetings.

This flexibility of working regardless of time and place became much more tangible for organizations after the corona pandemic.

Nevertheless, other aspects have become visible due to corona that had not been taken into account before. That’s because everyone in the world was working from home at the same time and also with the children.

After the Corona period, it has become clear to me what an office really means. For me, the new office has taken on a different meaning and I will explain why below.

The new office 2.0

A real workplace for the home. Organizations make it possible to have a height-adjustable desk, good office chair and a screen. Some employees, like me, sit at a kitchen table and other people have set up a separate office. Where previously it was difficult to get a workplace at home from the organization, it was now necessary. There was no prospect of going back to the office at the time. Working with children around you was the new normal.

Where at first the organization could not accept it properly when employees were working at home with children. Was it now accepted that children sometimes shoot through the image during a meeting. If your child needed some guidance for school during the day, there was room there and you made the hours in the evening. It was no longer about presence in the office, but about result-oriented work. Managers had to learn to support their employees remotely at an accelerated pace. They had to learn to look at the mental state of the employee, because employees were bound to digital meetings from minute to minute.

Digital skills were improved within a few days. Employees helped each other to understand the applications. Knowledge transfer was high, but the employees also became digitally fatigued. Organizations were looking for a way to find balance in digital meetings. This resulted in new agreements regarding digital meetings.

A few of these measures at a glance;

Digital appointments up to 45 minutes
Prepare for the meeting
Show up in the meeting on time
Discuss only the tasks/parts that need attention. They threaten to run out or where there are escalations
Stop when the appointment ends
Go for a walk outside if you have a digital meeting and the meeting allows it.

By shortening the standard appointments, you had a few minutes between meetings where you could stretch your legs or get a drink. This also allowed you to be on time for the next meeting. You can implement this measure as a policy in your Microsoft Outlook settings. As a result, technology helps you organize your time better.

Now that employees have created a good workplace and rhythm at home, we can return to the office. Something that many employees are so happy with, because we want to connect with each other. Seeing and speaking to each other without a laptop. Seeing each other makes it easier for managers to lead. It is easier for employees to support each other. Performing or taking over a task when someone is overflowing is so much easier when you’re in the office.

A lot of communication is non-verbal communication and that is important when we look at the mental part of the employee. Yet once back in the office, we have different needs as an employee. Many studies show that a new office is going to arise. It is similar to the new office 1.0, but with rules to find a better balance between the amount of stimuli / information that an employee receives and collaboration.

So what does ‘the new office 2.0’ look like?

A summary of what the new office 2.0 looks like:

Public spaces where you can work and talk to different colleagues
Quiet spaces where you can take a seat to finish something or to do a digital meeting
Meeting rooms in which you can meet hybrid (all meeting rooms are made suitable for hybrid meetings)
Space to work what you need. Home, office or any other location available
Policies that every employee can easily follow

The latter sometimes seems unnecessary, but rules help to make it pleasant for every employee. You come back to the office to meet and catch up on clients or projects. Do not make the rules complex, create spaces that are recognizable and where every employee understands what the intention is. Balance is what will be the most important part of the new office. No more open floor layouts, but balance between the open spaces and closed spaces to bring balance to the stimuli that an employee can tolerate to have a nice workplace.

Want to know more?

Read Working at the new office; the benefits.

Do you want to switch to the new way of working where you can really work anytime and anywhere? You can easily do this with the smart online workplace.
or ask for advice from one of our experts.
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You only have to focus on the decoration of your new home. But how does that work when you move with your office? And not to another physical office, but to an office in the cloud. There are many similarities with a ‘standard’ move.

This step-by-step plan ensures a flawless migration to your perfect online environment.

Step 1: Determine your goal and communicate

Migrating to the cloud starts with an idea. The corona time has shown that working online and being accessible anytime and anywhere works so well. One colleague can handle this better than the other. Certain functions and activities also lend themselves better to flexible working than others. There are plenty of questions you need to ask yourself right now. What exactly is my goal? Why does my business need this? Try to make a schedule and put everything in order for yourself. And importantly, communicate! Take your employees along in your online ideas. Then the move becomes a lot more pleasant.

Step 2: What to take with you and what not to take with you

Your office runs on all kinds of systems and applications. But does it all still work properly, do you still use all the programs and is everything still up-to-date? These are things that you and your system administrator (if you have one) should look at. If you want to migrate to the cloud, many applications can grow seamlessly. A modern moving company has the right cloud experts in-house to advise you on this.

Step 3: Choose your provider

Your system administrator (again, if you have one) is probably aware of all the possibilities that the cloud offers. But a cloud expert, you’re not just that. Chances are that he can advise you in choosing a provider. ‘The big three’, AWS (Amazon), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, are obvious. You choose continuity, availability and safety. Your employees will also not notice the large-scale migration.

If you choose a local, well-known, smaller provider, this can result in considerable cost savings. You only pay for what you use and the communication is more accessible and (often) closer.

Step 4: Design

Now it’s the turn of the experts. If you have opted for an online moving company, all your wishes (and those of your employees) will be inventoried. A design is made on this. Think of it as a map of the new environment with all the products and services that you will use after the migration. If all goes well, they will also let you know what results the move will lead to.

Everyone agree? Beautiful. Then the design is converted into the actual design. It ensures that the new cloud environment can receive all the data you want to take with you.

Step 5: The move

The migration is finally here. Your cloud is set up and ready for the future. A good partner knows better than anyone that your employees should be as little bothered as possible by the move to the cloud. Applications that suddenly stop or systems that are no longer accessible; that doesn’t make anyone happy.

A migration therefore takes place outside working hours. No one needs to notice any downtime. In small steps, all data is transferred to the new environment. The next morning, everyone logs in as if nothing had happened.

Step 6: Knowledge

The management of the new environment is different from what people were used to. With training and good documentation, this can be arranged in no time within your company. The ICT employees thus become cloud experts. Are there any questions? Then the moving company is always close by to help.

hallo, move to the cloud

At hallo, we know exactly what you need for the migration of your data. We help you take all the steps we have just described. This way you will never be faced with surprises. So do you have plans to move? Please contact us for advice. We know how important it is to grow with today’s trends and to be ready for what’s to come in the future.

Want to know more?

or ask for advice from one of our experts.

+34 919 545 222

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That is where the big advantage lies. Home is closer than ever. For the sake of convenience, let’s take the attic room as a new workplace. If your employer invests in working from home, you have a good office chair, a safe and stable connection (even in the attic) and two screens; you probably lack nothing at home.

There it goes: ‘A day of working from home, the benefits.’:

The morning rush hour

By default, your alarm goes off at half past seven. Your children have to go to school and your partner to work. Spreading sandwiches, brushing teeth, packing bags, it all has to fit in the busy morning rush hour at home. Speaking of morning rush hour, that doesn’t bother you this morning. You log in neatly at a quarter past eight, where you would otherwise have been stuck in traffic for three quarters of an hour. Logging in is a breeze, by the way. Your employer loves security, so you use a secure, reliable VPN connection at home. Again, no traffic jam (NL), but very quickly the right file (EN).

The meeting

After the coffee and the emails, it’s time for a meeting. Online meetings have the great advantage that they are short and to the point. Talking through each other is virtually impossible. Except for the person speaking, often all microphones go out. After the meeting you hang up and you can continue with your work. No distractions, no disruption. It means complete focus. Until you hear that the washing machine is ready, because you also have time for that.

Lunch

Here all options are open to you. A quick lunch at your computer is one of the possibilities. A lunch while you quickly watch the news or an episode of your favorite series sounds a lot better. Or a lunch with your partner and children, who have come out of work and school at noon respectively. It’s family time at its best. Do you miss the company canteen? Then make sure that you work partly from home and partly from the business.

Sports

Sports? During working hours? Of course, a flexible employer gives you the space to do what you like and what gives you energy. This way you can go full steam ahead for the rest of the day. Log in in the evening to make up for the lost hour, we think it is well arranged. It’s not for nothing that they say that remote workers are more productive than the colleagues who have stayed in the office. Absenteeism due to illness is also a lot lower, by the way.

New colleagues

With such a flexible employer as yours, the growth of staff is fine. Many job seekers no longer only look at salary or status. These are secondary conditions to which a great deal of value is attached. Let’s face it, how nice it is to be able to work in complete freedom (check the hello, vacancies here!) Ensuring a good work-life balance. Unfortunately, the new colleague who starts today has something tasty for the colleagues in the office.

End of afternoon

That project you are working on is progressing enormously now that you can continue to work undisturbed. It also really benefits the quality of your work. As a source of information in the office, they always know where to find you, even if the copier crashes. Calling is still a threshold. Often the problem solves itself. A golden middle ground is a message in Teams. You can react when it suits you. If it’s in a hurry, they’ll really find you.

Home

Well, of course, there you are. Two flights of stairs down and the work is forgotten again. You can bring your children to their training or prepare the food. Think about what you would do with all the time you have left.

hallo, home office

We are happy to help you. By partnering with hallo, home workspaces can be custom-designed to ensure maximum productivity. Together we go through all the steps to create workplaces that suit all colleagues. And it doesn’t stop there. With the knowledge and experience that hallo, has built up, we ensure together that in the future the cooperation within your organization will be (and remains) productive and easy. Contact us now and be surprised by the possibilities.

Want to know more?

Do you want to switch to the new way of working where you can really work anytime and anywhere? You can easily do this with the smart online workplace.

The post Working at the new office; the benefits. appeared first on hallo, .

Stay accessible

Health is priority number one. Then, of course, comes the health of your company and the services for your customers. And that often starts with accessibility. Now that your employees are working from home, you also want them to be able to take incoming calls on your company number. And being able to call outgoing with the fixed company number. Some tips on how to do this:
1. Transfer company numbers to mobile numbers of you and your employees. This is possible with almost every telephone exchange, and certainly with a Hosted VoIP telephone exchange. We are happy to set it up for you.

2. Use Hosted VoIP apps to receive incoming calls at home on your smartphone or laptop, just as you receive them on your fixed device at the office. An additional advantage is that you can also call outgoing with the fixed company number. This way, the person you call will not see your private number.

Cooperate

The daily chat over coffee, the appointment at the office with that new customer or the operational consultation with your team. That works a little differently when everyone is at home. Fortunately, there are various solutions to easily work together and stay in touch with each other.

1. Organize video meetings to hear and see each other! How about chat functionality? And all that combined with your Hosted VoIP telephone exchange. We are happy to inform you which video solution best suits your company.
2. Collaborate with Microsoft Teams in files, meet in video meetings, host a live stream with audience as an alternative to a presentation, and easily share documents. Besides did you know that you can also make and receive calls with Teams?

Working safely

Working from home and working together also involves working safely. With a VPN connection, you ensure that a secure connection is made between your employee’s laptop and your company network, for access to applications and data. And is that laptop also equipped with good and up-to-date anti-virus for protection against viruses and malware?

Security services

As with the previous lockdowns, we saw cybercriminals take advantage of the situation. They check if there are ‘digital doors’ open or they send you phishing. It is therefore very important that all your colleagues are aware of the dangers and that they know how to work safely from home. Because clicking on the wrong link is done in no time! Take a look at our security services such as our Phishing test, Security Scan as a Service, Awareness training or Risk Assessment.

Cybercriminals can also enter through your website. Are you curious if your website is safe? Do the free website scan.

We are happy to help you

We know better than anyone what it takes to provide your employees with safe work-from-home solutions. And we understand that it can be difficult to organize this yourself in the short term. That is why we are happy to help you. Let us know what help you can use to stay reachable and collaborate safely.

Want to know more?

Read all about our Better Safe Than Sorry campaign here.
Read more about the security service Security Awareness to be just one step ahead of hackers.
Check off on this security checklist what you as an organization are already doing about data security (and find out what you are doing!)
Make sure your e-mail address is in the database. Check if you’ve been hacked.
or ask for advice from one of our experts.

The post Working from home: working together and remaining accessible appeared first on hallo, .

How tasty it is. Log in at home after breakfast, check through your mail, meet with your colleagues via Teams, go to the office once or twice a week and hit the road a few times a week for an appointment. This work-life balance is good for the mind and for productivity. Long meetings are exchanged for concise meetings via Teams and the cancellation of the return journey to the office provides seas of extra time. It also appears that a certain degree of responsibility in hybrid working takes over from the colleagues. The boss entrusts you with a home workplace, then you have to offer something in return.

Appointments

An employer can certainly stimulate this working from home, even after Corona. Among other things, make sure you have a workplace with a good office chair, a large screen and a secure connection. Of course you would like to know what an employee is doing. Therefore, make arrangements to come to the office for a certain number of days. This way everyone enjoys the luxury of working from home and combines this with the cosiness of the office. That’s hybrid working in a nutshell.

This new form of work is not only good for the state of mind, the environment also benefits. With a view to the sustainable society, you as a company are of course happy to contribute.

Fewer kilometres means less petrol. Especially with the current fuel prices, you feel that quite a bit in the wallet.
Fewer traffic jams means less CO2 emissions. Your carbon footprint gets smaller and smaller.
Working from home means less space needed in the office and lower energy consumption.

The sustainable employer. How does that sound? Many younger generations have sustainability high on their list when they start looking for a new job. Another hybrid advantage.

On-premise, hybrid and in the cloud

For the employee, the term hybrid means that you can do your work from home or in the office. But for a company, this working environment also has a technical side. It is a combination of on-premise and a cloud solution.

With on-premise, an organization chooses to run the software and data on its own servers and computers. In most cases, an IT partner helps with security and support. The advantage of this is the control that you as a company keep on security and on implementation. If you still work a lot in the office, then on-premise can be the solution.

If you choose to work in a cloud environment, you do not have to worry about the maintenance of software or servers. It is the most flexible form of working, because upscaling and downscaling is arranged in no time. If you have a smaller company with employees who are on the go a lot, then a cloud solution is a good option.

With a hybrid work environment you take ‘the best of both worlds’. Data is safe in the cloud, but is also available locally at lightning speed. With a hybrid environment, you therefore retain control over many processes. On the other hand, you do have extra safety requirements to meet.

So all in all, there are many advantages of hybrid working.

hallo, opts for hybrid telephony

The choice you make depends entirely on which phase you are in as a company. Hybrid working means being accessible anytime, anywhere. Whether you are in the car, at the office for a day or log in at home; at hallo, we see the importance of secure, reliable connections. Choose the best of both worlds. A telephone exchange at your office in combination with all the advanced functions and services of the cloud. Please contact us. Then we explain how our business telephony solutions can help you towards a hybrid future.

Want to know more?

With this business telephony solution you have a complete telephone exchange at your disposal!
Really work anytime, anywhere with the smart online workplace. At the office, at home or on the road.
Do you suspect you’ve received a phishing email? You have to pay attention to this.
or ask for advice from one of our experts.

The post The benefits of hybrid and cloud working appeared first on hallo, .

But how is it possible that employees get more work out of their fingers at home than in the office? The short answer: by luck. Being able to organize work according to your own vision in addition to the private agenda makes people more effective, flexible and happier. An hour of exercise during the day is no problem if you can catch up on that same hour in the evening in peace.

Concentration

Then the long answer. Organizing your day yourself ensures that the work arch remains tense. If someone comes back from a walk during ‘working hours’, there is enough energy and concentration back to go to work. And catching up on that hour of walking, that’s no problem at all. One is more effective and flexible with the agenda and private time during office hours can even be made up in the evening. The employer-employee relationship thus becomes even more one of trust.

Talk about concentration. The long, soporific meeting scheduled each week can now be completed much faster through Teams. And the travel time, every day an hour there and an hour back (without traffic jams) in the car or public transport. Those are also a lot of precious minutes. Enough time left for things that give you energy.

And the bond of trust works both ways. The employer gives the employee the confidence to perform all (most) tasks from home. The employee feels a high degree of responsibility not to betray this trust and will increase productivity full of energy and concentration.

Hybrid, so also in the office

Chatting around the coffee machine, office humor, having lunch together. They are examples of why the office is missed while working from home. A hybrid form of working reaps the benefits of both worlds. If you make good agreements to work partly from home and partly at the business, then you combine the luxury of home with the job satisfaction and the contact with colleagues in the office. That’s why hybrid is the future.

The workplace

Investing in your employees also means investing in the physical condition. Hybrid working is fun, but not if the home office is at the kitchen table on a folding chair. Show that you take working from home seriously and offer your employees the right tools for this. A good (ergonomic) chair, a desk at the right height and a second screen. If you opt for the long term, these are costs that pay for themselves. More importantly, it makes working from home more pleasant and productive if you can prevent physical complaints to the back, neck and shoulders.

But the workplace is not just a sit-stand desk or a large screen. Digital tools are also needed to unburden the home worker. A good, safe online working environment such as Teams saves a lot of irritation and problems. The right software helps to ensure that communication with the rest of the team runs smoothly. And with all online meetings, a good webcam and a headset is therefore not a superfluous luxury.

In short; a happy employee is a productive employee, a flexible employee, and a loyal employee. Why go somewhere else when happiness at work and happiness at home appeal to you?

hallo, smart hybrid workplace

The fact that employees can work anytime, anywhere is in the interest of every company. With our smart workplace solutions, that’s no problem. They are reliable, clear, but above all very safe. We are happy to map out your wishes and put together an ideal hybrid working environment. So that you and your employees can really get started anytime, anywhere.

Want to know more?

With this business telephony solution you have a complete telephone exchange at your disposal!

Really work anytime, anywhere with the smart online workplace. At the office, at home or on the road.

Do you suspect you’ve received a phishing email? You have to pay attention to this.
or ask for advice from one of our experts.

The post How does hybrid working ensure that my employees are productive? appeared first on hallo, .