MSPNetworks Blog

With collaboration playing center stage for most businesses, it’s no small wonder that file sharing is such a priority for SMBs. If you want to establish solid file-sharing practices, you need the right solutions. Today, we want to explore four ways you can establish an efficient and secure file-sharing platform.

When taking stock of your business assets, technology is particularly critical to pay attention to. Let’s discuss why this is and what you must do to manage it properly.

You might have noticed that some of your younger workers are leaving your business much earlier than you might expect them to. This could be because of a phenomenon called “shift shock,” which examines employee engagement and satisfaction. Let’s consider how shift shock could potentially harm your business.

We’ve seen the conference rooms of a lot of businesses, from the modified break-room with stale coffee to immaculate lecture rooms with plush, comfy seats, and everything in between.

A good conference room can do a lot to impress potential clients and customers, encourage collaboration within your team, and leave a great impression on potential employees too. While we’re not going to pretend to be interior decorators, there are definitely some important steps that we can assist with to make sure your conference room is up to the task.

Clear Out the Clutter

First things first, your conference room needs to be neat and tidy. I’ve seen workplaces with conference rooms that often serve other functions depending on the day, and that’s fine. If your office has gym equipment or occasionally converts the conference room into a daycare for employed parents, that is definitely a nice gesture. However, you’ll want to be able to quickly transform the room into a comfortable meeting space without a lot of stuff in the way.

Avoid letting your conference room become the catchall for storage, because this is something that can escalate very quickly. It’s not a room for your staff to borrow office chairs from—you should be providing the comfiest office chairs for the butts that sit at the desks all day anyway. Your conference room should be ready to use for meetings and presentations at a moment’s notice.

Thoroughly Test the Wi-Fi

Anybody working in your conference room is likely going to be on the Wi-Fi. Make sure you have very strong service and direct or very-near direct access to the access point. That might mean installing a wireless access point in your conference room, or adjusting the position of the access point that is nearest to your conference room. 

Either way, imagine the types of real-world scenarios that you will put your wireless network through; your staff is all working on the network, and you have 6 or 8 or more people sitting in the conference room, connecting to the Wi-Fi.

You’ll want to make sure you have a reliable wireless network, and that you segment out the network for guests. 

You can do some creative things to help guests get signed into the Wi-Fi; I’ve seen people simply put up a sign with a QR code, or use NFC chips that you can scan with most smartphones. You’ll likely also want to post the guest password for those who can’t scan QR codes or NFC chips.

Wireless Peripherals to Pass Around

If you have a screen (or multiple screens) to display presentations on, make sure you have some easy-to-use wireless peripherals to control and manage on-screen content. A wireless keyboard and mouse assigned to the conference room will go a long way to make things easier for participants to work together and collaborate. 

Usually, that means having an endpoint (usually a mini PC) connected to the screen, so users can sign in and pull up presentations. If this is a standard endpoint on your network, you will also want to make sure that it is secured and monitored like the rest of your endpoints.

Clear Audio and Video for Remote Meetings

There may be times when you want to host a meeting with participants who can’t physically make it to your conference room. Thanks to the pandemic, these are typically called Zoom Rooms, and they are a great way to have multiple participants on your end meet with clients and teams remotely.

There are plenty of devices on the market that accomplish this task, from conference room phones that sit in the middle of the table, to small tablets that can be moved around. Either way, you’ll want a clear audio solution that everyone will be able to hear and participate in.

Need Help Modernizing Your Conference Room?

Your conference room should be dressed to impress. We can help provide the technology that makes it a place of collaboration for your staff, partners, and clients. To get a quote, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

Back in 2022, Microsoft coined the term “productivity paranoia,” referring to the fears that many managers have that remote workers aren’t working to their full productivity. However, as remote and hybrid work has continued for many companies, a different form has emerged: the feeling a worker has that they have to prove they are still productive while working from home.

Here are some tips to share with your team, so they can use them to avoid these feelings.

Productivity Paranoia is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Let’s explore the phenomenon for a moment.

Let’s say that Jane Q. Public is one of those employees who has shifted to remote operations, and while it hasn’t impacted her productivity, she has heard that her bosses have been grumbling about “some people” working remotely not pulling their weight.

Uh oh. What if “some people” includes Jane? Suddenly, Jane feels super self-conscious about the work she’s doing and how her higher-ups are viewing her. These thoughts are pretty understandably distracting, and before long, she’s starting to feel pretty disengaged from the work she’s doing and burnt out.

When all is said and done, Jane ends up actually being unproductive, when she would have been fine otherwise… and it’s all because the idea that she wasn’t pulling her weight was introduced to her.

Putting a Plug in Productivity Paranoia

The truth is that everyone in an organization will have some part to play in terms of eliminating this toxicity.

Managers need to maintain open communications with their remote employees so that expectations can be established and progress can be evaluated. This will help them see the productivity that these employees can—and hopefully do—accomplish, and if they aren’t, they can more effectively address it. It also helps to establish career-based goals with your remote employees. What is it they want from their work? What would you like to see them accomplish? What would they like to see themselves doing in the future for the company?

As for your team members, they can come to these meetings with ideas ready to contribute. Furthermore, there are software tools that your team can use to keep track of their productivity more clearly, but these should be provided and managed by your company and its IT team.

Working together, you and your team members can come to an understanding and create a healthier working environment that ultimately gets more done.

Reach Out to Us for the Tools You Need

We help businesses around New York with the technology their operations demand, and we’d be happy to help you too! Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more!

Whatever your industry, there are going to be processes that need to be followed, and this will require no small amount of organization to keep all the moving parts in tandem with each other. Fortunately, tools that can help with your project management needs are readily available, so long as you take advantage of their capabilities.

Take Google Sheets, for instance.

It’s true! Not only does Google Sheets offer fully customizable templates intended specifically for project management purposes, there are a lot of other features that are conducive to the kind of processes that should make up your project management activities.

For instance:

Google Sheets Allows You to Create Custom Dropdown Lists

With all the standard updates that proper project management will require—for instance, the status of certain goals and initiatives within your process—having the ability to select from a preconfigured list is hugely helpful. 

The existing templates that Sheets offers give you the opportunity to edit the drop-downs they come populated with. All you have to do is click the small downward arrow in the cell, select the pencil icon in the resulting menu, and edit the rules for the dropdown. For added visibility, you can even apply different colors to the different options. 

However, you won’t be able to add new options to your dropdowns or change the order in which they appear if using a preconfigured option. That will require you to create a dropdown menu from scratch. Once you’ve selected the cell or range of cells you want the dropdown to appear in, click Insert and then select Dropdown. A sidebar will appear for you to populate the data validation rules you want… or in other words, what options you want your dropdown menu to include. Once you’ve added and arranged your options, click Done to complete the process.

The Inherent Collaboration within Google Sheets Makes It Easier to Fully Plan a Project

Today’s workplace is increasingly built on collaborative work, which means that it is all the more important that the tools used therein are conducive to this kind of collaboration. Google Sheets, just as with the rest of the Google Workspace offering, is built to help you accomplish just that. Adding contributors to your spreadsheet is a simple matter… all you need to do is click the Share button at the top right of your page, select who you want to grant access to and specify the level of access and permissions you want to provide.

Once you’ve done so, others will be able to interact with a given Sheet at the level you have permitted them to—and you’ll still be able to adjust these permissions as needs change.

Google Sheets Allows You to Tag Your Collaborators

Google Sheets offers a feature called smart chips—small interactive widgets that can be embedded into your documents that link to pertinent information. You can tag different collaborators directly in the spreadsheet, and from there, email them, kick off a video chat, or (most applicable to our purposes today) assign a task to them.

We Can Help Outfit You with Proper Project Management Software, Too

Of course, you may prefer to use a dedicated software to help organize your company’s activities. Turning to us means you’ll have someone in the wings to help you procure, manage, and maintain all of the tools that your company uses.

Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that the better your relationship is with your employees, the more your business will benefit. Despite this, many businesses today lack trust between their organizational levels. Let’s go over a few simple tips that you can use to help maintain positive feelings amongst your team.

Communicate

Just as in any relationship, cultivating a positive rapport with your team members is critical to making things copacetic in the workplace—even if that workplace is dispersed, as remote work is apt to do. Therefore, it is in your best interest to keep the lines of communication between you and your team members wide open, both in terms of the group and as individuals.

Not only should you ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for your team members to speak with you, you should encourage them to do so about a variety of topics, including non-work-related ones. Getting to know them on a more personal level and speaking to them from that perspective will not only give you the information to communicate more effectively, but will help encourage them to be more communicative.

Show Your Appreciation and Respect

Working for anyone, regardless of how nice they are, can be a lot to deal with at times, so make sure that you prioritize showing your employees your honest (and that honest part is key) appreciation for their efforts toward your business. Acknowledging their hard work is one of the simplest things you can do, but it can be the difference between an exhausted employee mentally checking out at 3:45 and an exhausted employee rallying and putting in their best effort to finish out the day strong.

On a related note, it is just as important to show your team members enough respect to hear their opinions and input, even if you disagree or there are reasons that their input wouldn’t work effectively. In fact, hear them out and acknowledge the valid points they make before sharing how circumstances might make them impractical.

Embrace Any Opportunity to Learn

Continuing this line of thought, you also need to acknowledge that the role of “boss” makes you the authority in the business’ concerns, but not necessarily the authority on all the goings-on in terms of its operations. There are going to be certain aspects where your employees do in fact know more and/or better than you do, and there’s always more information than any one person can keep up with. Acknowledging this is a good first step, and is best followed through actively trying to learn as much as you can.

Allow Autonomy

Finally, it is important that your team members have the freedom to conduct themselves as they see fit as they work to meet the goals you have set for them. Not only will this help them feel more trusted and validated in their input, it can often result in more effective outcomes in their tasks and ultimately for your business.

It’s on you to get the most out of your staff, but we can help you get the technology in place to make that easier. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today to learn more about how we can play several roles to help get your business where you want it to go.

It doesn’t take much to get us to start ranting about the dangers of phishing, and it’s a topic that we won’t stop talking about for some time. Unfortunately, phishing comes in enough forms that it isn’t always so simple to spot. For this week’s tip, we just wanted to run through the different formats phishing can take, focusing on how to identify each type.

First, let’s briefly review what phishing is.

Phishing is a Form of Social Engineering, Plain and Simple

To sum up phishing, it’s effectively the attacker trying to hack the user, instead of the network. This approach just makes sense. Let’s say you were trying to illegitimately access a business’ network—does it sound more challenging to develop the technical skills and know-how to break past today’s cyberdefenses, or to fool someone into giving you the keys to the castle?

Exactly.

So, attackers come up with phishing schemes, either targeting people on a wide scale or crafting specific attacks with a certain target in mind, and share them through various means of communication. Let’s go over these methods, and the warning signs you need to look out for.

Email Phishing

By sending an email that is purportedly from a trustworthy source or authority, phishers are able to extract sensitive information from their targets. As such, phishing emails currently feature a few hallmarks:

• Attachments—An unexpected attachment in an email can easily be used as a vehicle for malware and other attacks. These can be either individual documents, or in the form of a ZIP file.
• Spoofed Links and Senders—Many phishing emails will appear to come from certain senders or websites, trying to take advantage of the inherent trust that these senders or websites have in the public. Paying close attention to these links and senders will help you catch these efforts.
• Misspellings and Grammatical Errors—Most professional communications are (or should be) proofread fairly extensively before being sent. Therefore, an email that presents a lot of these issues is somewhat likely to be a phishing scam.

Smishing

Smishing is a form of phishing that is sent via text message, and as such, offers its own warning signs. For instance:

• Messages from Odd Numbers—Messages that come from non-cell numbers can be a sign of a scammer using an email-to-text service.
• Unsolicited Messages—If a message purports to come from an organization and you didn’t prompt any communication with them, take it with a grain of salt and reach out to that organization through another means.
• Personal Details—If there are personal details shared in the message itself, it could very well be a phishing scam, as scammers will try to add pressure on their victims.

Vishing

Vishing is a form of phishing where a scammer will call their intended victim directly, seeking to extract personal details from the call’s recipient. Watch out for these red flags:

• Too-Good Offers—Phishers will often place phone calls promising rewards or perks that are unrealistically appealing.
• Calls from Authorities—If you receive a call from some organization or higher authority, don’t be afraid to question its validity…particularly if they start pressuring you and/or trying to scare you.
• Excessive Personal Details—A lot of your information can be found online, if an attacker so wishes, so if a caller has more information than they should, that’s a red flag.

Social Media Phishing

Phishers will also utilize social media to their advantage, hijacking accounts and again, stealing personal information. To avoid this, keep an eye out for:

• Duplicated Accounts—Some phishers will find someone, make a copy of their profile, and start sending that person’s contacts invitations to connect. This is another time you should separately confirm that someone is who they claim to be.
• Bogus Links—Social media platforms offer phishers with a very convenient means to share out links to fraudulent websites, where personal details can be harvested from unwitting visitors.
• Integrated Phishing—Sometimes, phishers will use the messaging functions of these social media platforms to pose as authorities and extract key account information, like access credentials.

Hopefully, this will help you better spot phishing attacks in the future. For more assistance with your business’ IT and cybersecurity, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

The holidays are fast approaching and that means people are going to miss work for one reason or another. If you can get away from the office for a little bit, you’ll want to set up an out-of-office message to ensure that others know you will get back to them when you get back to the office. Here’s how you can set up an autoresponder for an out-of-office message in Microsoft Outlook.

How to Set Up Your Out-of-Office Message

Setting up an autoresponder in Outlook is simple. To get started, open up Outlook and select File.

Under the Info section—the one with the Home icon—make sure you have your account selected. You should see an option underneath it for Automatic Replies.

In the box that appears, you will see an option for Send Automatic Replies. You can configure your auto replies to send only during a specific timeframe using the drop-down boxes and date ranges. Once you have the dates determined, you can use the textbox beneath to enter your auto reply message. This will be sent to anyone who sends you an email while you have your autoreply active.

It’s also worth noting that you have a lot of control over the text that appears in this box. You can include links to resources, contact information for who they might want to contact while you are out of the office, and so on. We recommend that you don’t just leave your contacts with a simple “I’ll get back to you.” If you do leave the office for an extended period of time, be sure to give your contacts some direction, as it could make all the difference for a prospective client, annoyed customer, or other disgruntled auto reply recipient.

We hope you found this tip helpful! If you have any suggestions for future tip blogs, be sure to sound off in the comments below.

At first glance, cybersecurity might seem incredibly complicated and difficult to understand, but even a baseline understanding of some of the principles of cybersecurity can go a long way toward protecting your business. Let’s discuss some of the common-sense ways you can keep your business secure, even if you don’t have an internal IT department to ask for help from.

Keep Your Antivirus and Security Tools Updated

What’s better than eliminating a threat from your network? Stopping it from getting that far entirely. With antivirus, firewalls, and other security measures in place, you can keep your business secure from the majority of threats before they even become a problem in the first place.

Use a VPN

In case you or someone else on your team has to travel, or if you have a team that works remotely, a VPN is incredibly valuable. Public Wi-fi is notorious for being quite dangerous, and a virtual private network can offer a safe haven for you to access the Internet without fear of being observed by any onlookers.

Utilize Multi-Factor Authentication

You can take your security practices to the next level through the use of multi-factor authentication. A password can only do so much in today’s threat landscape, so you should back it up with biometrics, generated PINs, and other secondary measures that can make things much more difficult for any would-be hacker.

Use a Password Manager

We know you’ve heard it a thousand times; “always use a different password for each and every one of your accounts to maximize security.” While this should be practiced, it can be difficult to observe if you don’t have a password manager keeping tabs on each of your credentials. Plus, let’s face it, you don’t want to rely on your browser’s password management options if you can help it. 

Avoid Phishing Scams

While it would certainly be amazing to win the lottery, a free vacation, or catch some juicy gossip in your email inbox, the fact of the matter is that phishing emails know that these kinds of temptations make you want to click on links in emails, regardless of how likely you think they might be. Other tactics used include fearmongering and threats, which aren’t nearly as fun to receive, but are equally as effective, if not more so under the right circumstances. Either way, you should use extreme scrutiny when navigating messages from unknown or unsolicited sources—especially if they contain links or attachments.

Let Us Help Your Business Keep Itself Safe

While you can certainly do all of the above on your own, why not work with a managed service provider like MSPNetworks? We can take the stress out of managing your network security. To get started, call us at (516) 403-9001.

For small businesses, having a fast, reliable Internet connection is needed to run all the digital tools that your staff has come to depend on. If you don’t have the bandwidth in place, you can deal with bottlenecks that can ruin communications, stall productivity, and cause operational issues of all types. Today, we’ll take a look at how to determine the amount of bandwidth you need to support your business’ computing infrastructure.

What Exactly Is Bandwidth?

There is a misconception that bandwidth is the speed of the Internet that you obtain through your chosen service provider. It does play a role, but it is not synonymous with connection speed. Bandwidth is actually the measurement of the amount of data that can be sent over your Internet connection and across your network in general in a designated time frame; typically measured in megabits per second (Mbps). The more bandwidth you have, the more data can be transmitted at one time. With a lot of businesses now leaning quite heavily on digital tools, knowing how much bandwidth your company needs is extremely important.

What You Need to Know to Get the Bandwidth Your Company Needs?

The first thing that you need to get the bandwidth your company needs is to find a reliable ISP (Internet Service Provider). Not all ISPs are created equal and for business purposes having an ISP that can easily scale your bandwidth to your needs is an important factor. You also don’t want to overpay, and waste your operational capital.  

Let’s look at the variables you have to consider when choosing the right amount of bandwidth for your business:

The Number of Connected Devices

This is pretty simple. The more devices that need to be connected to the Internet, the more bandwidth you are going to need; especially if these devices are consistently being used to access Internet-fueled applications. You also need to take into account all the mobile devices that are connected to the network. In many cases they will outnumber workstations and other hardware. 

The Type of Applications Used

Your business has a unique profile that is made up of all the tools you use and the processes that govern the use of them. For basic use, such as online browsing, email, and social media, a company would only need about one Mbps per user. Most businesses nowadays use their Internet connection for much more than this. Activities like VoIP calling, video conferencing, video streaming, and cloud computing can multiply this by up to five times. 

This is why it is important to get a good read on all the potential uses your business has to build a connection that works to support your business’ computing requirements. 

At MSPNetworks, we know how important the Internet is for your business. Our consultants can help you estimate the level of bandwidth you need, and can actively help you acquire that bandwidth so that you can operate as efficiently as possible. Give us a call today at (516) 403-9001 to talk to one of our IT professionals to set up an assessment of your Internet connection and applications to give your business the best chance of success.

When you run a business, solid decision making is crucial to achieving success. This goes from hiring and managing your staff, choosing the right prospects, supporting your customers, and procuring tools and resources that make your business possible. Today, technology is not only important, it is a major consideration when determining your yearly budgets. Let’s go through a couple of tips on how to make the best technology decisions for your company.

What could be the most crucial variable in the whole technology-procurement process, understanding how the technology you purchase will work for your business. There are a lot of cool technologies that are effectively worthless for your company because it just doesn’t fit the practical needs of it. If you want to spend the money that you’ve earmarked for your technology needs, following these four suggestions will help you get rolling in the right direction. 

Consider Alternative Costs 

Your business is putting in a new system that promises to enhance efficiency and boost productivity. Great. How is that going to work when 99 percent of your staff has never seen, let alone used, the technology that promises these returns? Technology typically just doesn’t work, it needs to be ushered in with security and usability in mind. If you expect to get returns out of an implementation without considering the costs and time in training and testing your staff, you probably will be disappointed about the return you get on your new investments. 

Involve the Right People In the Discussion

The technology you purchase for your company very rarely is utilized by a single individual. As a result, during your evaluation you should look for perspective from the people who have the most to lose if the technology implementation goes sideways. That means receiving input from experienced employees, stakeholders, as well as management before spending a dollar on new technology. These perspectives can give you the best idea of what exactly needs to be done to improve the processes you already have. 

Choose Your Partners Carefully

One consideration many less-adept business owners don’t make is who they are dealing with. Sorry to say, not every business you work with will have the future of your business in mind when working with you. Sure, they want the sale, but if you get a vendor that doesn’t see the relationship as a two-way street, you may want to consider backing off.

Remember to Set Achievable Goals 

One of the most important parts about implementing anything new into a business that already produces is to set realistic goals. Sure, to make big changes you must have some notion that this is the direction you want to bring your company, but even small projects can bind up productivity and cost immense amounts of money if they aren’t handled correctly. You’ll want to Identify goals and create objectives that progress toward them; putting too much pressure on any deployment will be sure to have negative consequences. 

Business owners need to listen to their instincts and have realistic expectations when trying to make technology decisions that will have an effect on the health of their business for years to come. At MSPNetworks, our consultants understand that business technology is a tool that can be leveraged for great benefit if it is implemented and supported correctly. If you would like to have a conversation about the future of your business’ technology with some of the best IT minds in New York, give us a call today at (516) 403-9001.

Outsourced IT is a great option for the modern small business, and no matter where your shortcomings lie in managing technology, we are confident you can find value in the service. Whether you need a full-fledged IT department or someone to help implement new solutions, we’ve got you covered, and for the right price point, too! Let’s take a look at some of the trends you can expect from managed IT, as well as how they influence the costs compared to those of the traditional break-fix model.

A Comparison Between Managed Services and Break-Fix

Let’s begin by really distilling the two options into the most basic description of each.

• Break-Fix services are transactional in their nature, with each issue in need of resolution being billed separately. 
• Managed services operate as an outsourced department would, with all services (based on the established agreement) covered by a set monthly subscription cost.

At the root of it is how the business is charged for the IT services rendered. While there are countless other differences between the two types of services, such as proactive versus reactive maintenance, and the scope of services rendered, we want to dial in on the financial differences between the two.

It Comes Down to How Much You Get for Your Money

With break-fix IT, you are going to have to get used to at least a certain level of downtime, as it’s built into the service model. You can’t fix technology that isn’t broken, after all. You are reacting to issues that appear after your processes have been disrupted. This means you are losing money due to the lost productivity and perhaps even missed opportunities. You have to weigh the value of these missed opportunities and issues against the cost of the services. Is it worth it? We don’t think so.

When compared against the value that managed service agreements cover, including complete monitoring and maintenance through the use of remote technologies, and live assistance available whenever your employees need it, there’s no questioning the difference. Some issues might need to be addressed in-house, but the data collected prior to that visit will make the technician’s job easier and more expedient. In all, you can expect a more consistent and predictable service offering from a managed service provider, making the service easier to budget and prepare for. It’s comparable to having a full-fledged in-house IT department on your side, only much more cost-effective.

While We May Be Biased, The Comparative Value We Offer Speaks for Itself

When you work with MSPNetworks, we ensure that you aren’t getting charged for every little thing done to your infrastructure; our business model is all-inclusive to ensure that you know what you are getting at all times. We try to limit the surprise expenses associated with technology management so you can focus on running your organization the way it’s supposed to be run.

It might be tempting to go with a low-commitment style of technology management, but we assure you that the break-fix providers are not going to have your best interests in mind. You deserve IT maintenance from a team invested in your prolonged and continued success. To learn more about how we can help you with this, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

The workplace is, fittingly, a place for work to be done. While there are a lot of factors that can contribute to a person’s day-to-day productivity, having a space that is conducive to accomplishing their work tasks can be seen as essential. Let’s go over how you can design a workspace that does just that:

Have a Place for Gadgets to Be Out of Sight (and Out of Mind)

While mobile devices have many legitimate and genuinely useful applications in the workplace, the pattern many have to sit and endlessly refresh their social media profiles isn’t one of them. A good rule of thumb to improve productivity is to keep these devices—and any gadget like them—put away. 

Of course, this isn’t a perfect solution to procrastination. People don’t need a device to zone out, and it isn’t as though they couldn’t visit Twitter on their workstation if they really wanted to. However, by reducing the potential for temptation, you and your team members can accomplish more. Pick a desk drawer to keep your phone in, and you may find yourself accomplishing much more.

Invest in the Right Peripherals

This may sound crazy, but giving your team the right tools to use can make all the difference. A good pair of headphones very much helps collaboration and communication if they also feature a headset, and by blocking external sound, they reduce the distractions that make it through to your team members’ collective attention. There are countless similar examples for all of the other peripherals your team may depend on, depending on their role—and there’s nothing wrong with going a little low-tech here, too.

For instance, if you haven’t switched to a paperless office and your team still uses paper documentation, providing each person with a pen and paper to jot down quick notes and a monitor-mounted document holder that allows them to reference other files and notes without shifting their gaze too far can keep their focus where you want it: the task at hand.

Encourage Movement and Personalization

There are also the little ways that you can help keep your team engaged and thereby productive. For instance, if it isn’t overdone, a little bit of movement keeps your team more engaged than motionlessly staring at their monitors all day does. Likewise, a clinical workspace that’s devoid of personality can also leave employees feeling devoid of purpose. So long as it isn’t overdone to the point of distraction, a few personal belongings and other identifiers can contribute a lot to an employee’s engagement (bonus points for plants, which have been shown to boost productivity through their presence).

In a lot of ways, you have more control over how productive your team is than you may think—it’s just up to you to give them the environment and tools they need to thrive. We can help supply the tools and support they’ll need. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today and ask how our managed services can help boost (among other things) your business’ productivity!

While we’re all for efficiency, there are some boundaries that should not be crossed for everyone’s benefit. Take, for instance, the email you use to subscribe to online services. While it may be tempting (or, for some people, automatic) to use your work email address when you sign up for, say, your Netflix account or an online merchant, we wanted to discuss why this is a bad habit to get into that could have lasting consequences.

The reason you shouldn’t use your work email for personal purposes is a simple one:

What Happens If You No Longer Work for the Company?

Seriously, we want to know: what’s your plan if your employment comes to a sudden end?

Let’s say that you were using your work email for an assortment of personal reasons—maybe you used it to subscribe to a few subscription services, or you used it to login to a favorite online retailer or two… maybe one named after a really big river in South America.

Potential for distraction aside (which is itself a whole other can of worms), tying your personal life too much to your work life can have some long-term issues. Let’s say you did choose to use a work email to sign up for a personal service, only to leave that job some time later.

Regardless of the reason you leave—whether you or your position was terminated, you found another job, whatever—one of the first things that any responsible company will do is to deactivate your accounts from their system. Neglecting to do so would be a cybersecurity failure on their part. Good luck trying to recover a forgotten password when the authentication is sent to an email you no longer have access to.

Businesses Should Actively Discourage Private Use of Professional Email Addresses

There are plenty of reasons that a business should want to keep their users from using their professional email accounts for their own personal purposes. We’ll quickly run through the list:

• Corporate accounts are readily available online in many cases, making them easy targets for phishing and spam.
• On a related note, it becomes a lot easier for a cybercriminal to find online accounts that are tied to a business email address and use what they find to craft more effective spear phishing messages—ones that are tailored specifically for a particular recipient.
• Many people still reuse passwords across many different websites and services, so if a website is breached that an employee’s work email was used to access, there’s a good chance that a work password could be stolen with it.

Cybersecurity Needs to Take Precedent Over Convenience

While convenience is an appealing motivator, it is important that your processes are shaped to prioritize your business’ security. Educating your team about password best practices and the actual importance of this kind of work/life balance will be key to shoring up this particular security issue.

We’re Here to Help Strike the Balance

Turn to us for help with keeping your team members from inappropriately merging their work lives and personal lives, as well as our assistance in optimizing the rest of your processes. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more.

The past several years have brought about a shift in the workforce, and it’s not one that anyone could have seen coming. More people than ever before are leaving their jobs. How can you keep your employees engaged so they have a minimal chance of leaving their position within your company?

Here are some tips you can use to keep your employees from participating in “The Great Resignation.”

What is Driving The Great Resignation?

Several different contributing factors are involved, the result being 47.8 million voluntary job vacancies in 2021 alone. This was the highest number recorded since 2001, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022 will likely not be any better. In February alone, there were 4.4 million resignations in the United States.

This trend is not exclusive to the States, either. The social media posts about people quitting their jobs with the highest levels of engagement are from all over the world.

But Why Are People Quitting?

Some people who are leaving their positions joined during the pandemic, where remote work policies were in place and the people involved–those in the Gen Z age group, for example–are not interested in a commute to the office. On a similar note, many parents, some of them new, are finding that the time spent at home while working remotely helps tremendously to balance their home life responsibilities.

In fact, some are leaving their positions because they are being urged to return to the office, something which is simply not preferable for some workers. In this case, the needs of workers are being sidelined by companies’ needs to control their workforce. This has ultimately led to workers making sacrifices in their flexibilities and pay just to remain in a remote work environment.

Other reasons to leave might include poor workplace interactions and a lack of work/life boundaries. The Great Resignation has forced many people to look at their own priorities and to shift their focus to things that matter most in their lives, and work does not seem to be among them.

How Can I Avoid Losing People?

Simply put, you can do a lot of good by acknowledging that remote work is a possibility for your workforce, and it will do a lot to aid in employee retention. This will be particularly helpful to keep employees on both the younger and the older sides of the spectrum. You might even consider offering hybrid options if you can’t bring yourself to commit wholeheartedly to remote work options.

MSPNetworks can help you implement the technology needed to aid in this shift. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Unfortunately, cybersecurity is a lot easier to reinforce in the office than it is when your team members are working remotely—and even then, it can be a serious challenge to maintain. However, let’s focus on the remote worker’s situation for a few moments and review a few best practices that can help a remote worker stay secure.

Best Practice: Provide Them with the Tools to Stay Secure

When your team members are working outside of the office, they aren’t going to be protected by the security you’ve implemented into your business network—not without a few specialized tools in place. This is why your remote workers should have fully up-to-date antivirus solutions and virtual private networking (VPN) connections in place.

A VPN in particular is a great tool for a remote worker, as it allows them to access your business’ network from elsewhere without revealing their traffic and data to snooping eyes.

Best Practice: Emphasize Password Security Even More

Spend enough time with us, and you’ll likely be able to recite the advice that we repeatedly share regarding passwords—never writing them down, using a different password for every account, creating passwords (or ideally, passphrases) that will hold up to attempts to crack them, and many more tidbits. Remote employees need to be held to the same standards, and then some.

With your team members acting outside of your office, they aren’t sitting in an environment that actively reminds them to maintain their security standards in general, meaning that their password practices are apt to suffer. Working to keep these standards top of mind will be important for you to prioritize.

Best Practice: Reinforce Physical Protections

Cybersecurity practices go beyond password resilience and antivirus protections—you also need to consider your actual technology and the physical protections you have defending it. Keeping unexamined peripheral devices away from your work hardware, keeping your work hardware secured, and generally keeping it reserved exclusively for your work-related use are essential parts to your overall security posture.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg—there’s a lot more that can and should be done to ensure your remote workers aren’t undermining your business’ cybersecurity. Learn more by reaching out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Laptops are pretty great, I think we can all agree, simply due to their portability. Having said that, the one-screen situation that laptops bring with them can certainly get in the way of productivity—particularly for those who are used to using more than one. Let’s discuss why an additional display is so helpful, and what your options may be for hooking one up to your laptop.

Why an Additional Screen is Worth It

First off, if you haven’t used a second monitor to work yet, it’s time to get on board. The average business workstation really should have two displays, simply because it has shown to provide a significant boost to productivity. Instead of rearranging tabs and windows each time you need something else in focus, double the working area gives you considerably more options. Need to check your email pretty consistently throughout the day? Have it up on one of your monitors, while your current task is up on the other. Need to check data? Have a historical record on one side, with the new version on the other.

Honestly, once you start using multiple monitors, just having access to one feels restrictive.

Plus, adding an additional monitor doesn’t have to be a bank-breaking investment—provided the monitor you’re choosing isn’t too expensive (which, for business purposes, it usually doesn’t need to be). The other hardware you have has probably already been configured to add an additional monitor by adding at least one additional port.

How to Check That Your Laptop Supports Multiple Monitors

In terms of hardware, there are a few questions you need to ask yourself:

• Does my device’s graphics card support multiple monitors? Nowadays, this is simple enough to determine. All you need to do is visit the manufacturer of the graphics card’s website, find your particular model of graphics card, and check the specifications to see if multiple monitors are supported. Of course, IT can help you with this.
• Does your laptop have the right port available? Naturally, you’ll need a way to plug your additional display(s) into your device. We’ll cover this in deeper detail in a moment.

Once you’ve confirmed that your laptop can support more than one monitor input, all you really need to do is plug in your additional display and—once Windows either prompts you to set it as an additional screen or just does it itself—you’re off to the races.

Otherwise, you can access your Settings, and from there, navigate through System, Display, and scrolling down to Multiple displays, adjust the provided drop-down menu so that Extend these displays is selected.

Which of These Ports Can Be Used?

When it comes to attaching an additional monitor, there are a few different ports to choose from.

VGA Ports

While this is an older option, some devices still have a VGA port (the blue trapezoid with all the little pinholes in it, with two attachments on either side for connecting the cable). Not all monitors will have this option anymore, but VGA to HDMI adapters are also an option. Speaking of which…

HDMI/microHDMI Ports

HDMI (short for High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is more or less the standard, and so can be found on most devices. Similar in size to a USB port, these connections have a unique shape that most modern monitors and even televisions support. What’s more, these cables are quite easy to come by—there’s a good chance your display came with one—and are commonly used by various professional and consumer devices.

Some devices, like the smaller laptops that have become common for business use, might have a microHDMI port available for your use. While cables with a micro HDMI end may be a little harder to come by, this still should not be too challenging. If you can’t find a micro HDMI cable, adapters to standard HDMI are plentiful.

DVI

DVI—or Digital Visual Interface—connectors are very versatile, enabling many different screens to still work with modern devices. This allows a level of backwards compatibility that could potentially save your company a bit of money if you happen to have some older displays in working order. DVI cables come with one of a variety of connector types, so make sure you check with IT to ensure you have a cable that will work with your laptop and chosen display.

DisplayPort Ports

Similar in appearance to the familiar HDMI, DisplayPort ports are the ones with only one beveled corner. These ports will require you to use a DisplayPort cable.

Adding a Dock Could Contribute More Options

Some of the more modern ports that are found on different laptops—namely USB-C and Thunderbolt—also allow you to connect a type of additional hardware to your computer to further expand how many monitors you can use. Plus, a dock makes it far easier to extricate your laptop from all the connections it has when you need to take advantage of the laptop’s inherent mobility.

Of course, this will require you to procure the right dock that has compatible ports with your particular model of laptop. That, along with all the other considerations we referenced in this blog, is how MSPNetworks can help.

Part of our many responsibilities is to ensure that your team has the tools they need to be as productive as possible—and yes, using multiple monitors has been shown to have legitimate benefits to productivity due to the uses we covered at the very beginning of this blog. Of course, there are a lot of ways that we can help you make the most of your technology beyond helping you set up multiple monitors.

For more information about the scope of our managed services, check out the rest of our website, or give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

Typing on your keyboard is something that you do every day, but sometimes you just don’t want to do it. You can give your hands a break and use Microsoft Word’s dictation feature; this lets you use your voice to write in the software. Let’s go over how you might use the feature on a desktop, web browser, or mobile device.

On Your Desktop Application

If you use Microsoft Word on your desktop or a laptop, you can use the built-in dictation feature. From the Home tab, click on the Dictate button. It is the blue microphone in the top-right corner. You can then click on the gear icon to adjust the settings as needed. Some of these settings include auto-punctuation, language filtering, and dialect. You can use the pause or unpause buttons to take a break when needed. There is also a guide available to show you how to do things like add punctuation.

On the Browser Version of Word

The browser version of Word is exactly the same as the desktop version; you just go to the Home tab and use the Dictate button. The settings are mostly the same, too, so just follow the directions as they appear in the previous paragraph. You can click the X to close out of dictation.

On Your Mobile Device

The mobile application version of MS Word gives you an easy-to-use button just above the keyboard for dictation. You’ll see a microphone on it. The same features as outlined above work here in the same way. To stop dictation, click on the keyboard icon that will take the place of the dictation button.

Sure enough, it’s easy to use the dictation feature, and that’s probably by design. However, we do want to make sure you are aware that you should be proofreading your work, as anything voice-related can be somewhat unreliable on its own.

For even more great tips and tricks, subscribe to our blog.

It’s quite possible for employees to overwork themselves, even in a remote environment. Let’s take a look at some ways that you can minimize remote overwork for your employees, especially as the boundaries typically set in place by the morning commute are eroded and work/life balance blurs.

First Off: Yes, Overwork is an Issue

Countless issues and workplace challenges have bubbled to the surface in recent years, including others that are much more divisive, like wage inequality and racial imbalances. However, these issues are much greater and more difficult to address in this format, and overwork presents a different challenge to overcome.

Overwork is a very real issue that can impact your organization in several different ways. Employees can grow fatigued, anxious, and physically ill with symptoms like headaches, pain, and vision problems. Too much remote work can also impact interpersonal communications. Add in the emotional stress and pressure caused by the pandemic and you have many employees walking around like ticking time bombs. All of this can create the perfect storm for destroying even the best worker’s productivity and performance.

The question must be asked, what can we do to help reduce overwork?

How to Help Diminish Remote Overwork

You might not be able to visit each of your workers individually, but you can implement policies that can keep them from overworking themselves in general, and it all starts by thinking about things not in terms of remote work policies, but in-house and remote policies.

1. Support the Use of a Schedule

We are not talking about just setting up a schedule outlining work hours; we also mean that you should help them to establish a workday routine that is manageable. Be sure to emphasize the importance of starting and ending the workday at consistent and appropriate times, and try to reinforce this consistency whenever you can. This helps to prevent employee burnout and overwork.

2. Use Time Tracking Tools

Time-tracking tools can help your team and keep them from overworking themselves, as you can take a look at where all of their time is being spent at a glance. A visual reminder of where they are in their seemingly-endless pile of tasks can be immensely helpful. MSPNetworks can help you implement a time-tracking tool that will help your team stay on task and keep them from working themselves into the ground.

3. Encourage Your Team to Speak Up

Finally, you should empower your team to speak up if they feel their work requirements are becoming unreasonable. If they feel like they are overburdened or afraid to say no to more work, you need to know. Make sure they are comfortable coming to you about any concerns they might have so that you can address the issue at its roots without making it worse.

MSPNetworks can help your team implement the tools it needs to succeed. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.