Investment firms such as hedge funds, asset managers, wealth management and private equity firms are facing new hybrid working arrangements. Is now the moment to consider specialist cloud-hosted IT for hybrid working, in addition to its established benefits in cybersecurity and regulatory compliance?
Making the Unthinkable Work
Unprecedented change has meant that investment firms have switched their attention to be effective whilst working remotely. With workplace restrictions easing, you are now looking at slowly letting employees back into the office. However, the new status quo means implementing and adapting to new workplace practises or risking a future without sustainable success. In most cases the return to an office will not be binary: most employees expect more flexibility, with hybrid working arrangements comprising a mix of home, remote and office working.
For those organisations with on-site systems, the switch to remote working created significant network and remote access challenges. If all your users are now coming back to the office, it might seem that you can simply back out those changes and return to normal. But is it that simple? Everything we see implies only a partial return to the office, meaning you will need to implement further changes to make a mixed population of home and office-based users work securely and effectively.
Returning to a New Office Experience
Research conducted by Morgan Stanley highlights workers in London are much more likely to continue to work remotely compared to other European capitals. 82% of people who responded wished to continue to work partially from home.
A survey conducted by LinkedIn has found that one in five (20%) said that they intend to continue working from home until they feel more comfortable in a work place environment. Just 24% said they wished to return to normal working in the office. 76% of workers wanted to change their working practice including limiting their time in the office to a few days a week and to minimise physical contact, emphasising the growing demand for flexible working arrangements.
Hedge funds will need to consider their staff’s new expectation or risk employee resistance and other implications further down the line. It is important for investment firms to implement IT processes that are versatile and that offer long-term solutions ensuring efficiency, flexibility and security.
Moving back – What You Need to Consider
Having employees working effectively from two locations raises several questions:
- How will you integrate the new collaboration and video conferencing apps back in the office?
- Are you going to add additional bandwidth to accommodate the new applications and file sharing so you do not experience a slower connection? At what cost?
- How secure are the new applications you adopted?
- Do you have the resources to handle both office-based and home-based employees?
- If you utilise a local server that has been adapted to allow effective remote working, how is your firewall going to work with a split workforce?
- How much will it cost to have your firewall modified again?
- What are your more permanent alternatives?
Is Now the Time to Consider Moving to the Cloud?
Cranberry Cloud is one of a range of cloud-based services from Tivarri. Being one of the longest-serving providers in this market, with extensive knowledge of cloud technology for regulated companies, we have been heavily involved in industry wide communication protocols used for secure remote access. We provide full office collaboration with all common industry applications supported including Bloomberg professional. This has allowed us to successfully migrated thousands of applications to our cloud-hosted Desktop platforms.
We have extensive knowledge of Microsoft licensing options, enabling us to provide you with a cost-effective solution. Tivarri also provides a disaster recovery service SystemFlip Continuous Recovery and small footprint low energy fan-less computers Cranberry Computer.
In our next article we will look at the operation issues with “Making Remote working Secure and Sustainable”.
Do you have questions about how returning to work is going to affect your IT systems?
Get in touch and speak to an expert.
