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Is Wireless Internet for Working From Home Right For Your Organization Business
We've got some great deals going on right now exclusively for our online customers... chat now to hear more! Author: Nick Reese,Today's enterprise applications benefit from fast, reliable and secure internet access—something that may have been taken for granted when working from the office. With remaining a permanent feature for many organizations, employers and employees alike may need to rethink their internet for working from home. Just like workers in the office, remote workers can depend on technology such as the cloud, , analytics platforms and machine learning to do their work. These applications can create and consume enormous amounts of bandwidth that a residential internet connection may not be able to accommodate. As companies embrace remote and hybrid work, it makes sense to take a close look at the technology that their employees use. Just as employees may have a work-issued smartphone and laptop for working at home, some organizations are now supplying to ensure employees can stay productive and secure. In order to replicate the in-office enterprise internet experience within the homes of remote workers, businesses can use wireless technology, sometimes called to deliver an ultra-fast and reliable connection. Wireless business internet vs. traditional, wired internet service?,is typically a fixed wireless access (FWA) solution that provides business-grade internet connectivity. Wireless signals are sent from nearby cell phone towers and received by a specialized router inside the employee's house. The employee then connects to this router for their Wi-Fi network, allowing them to access business internet for work. For some low-bandwidth tasks such as email, messaging or using internet-based applications, wireless business internet provides connectivity that allows them to leverage the same level of applications and productivity at home as they do in the office. Residential home internet connections may lack the bandwidth, security features and reliability that business users require, especially if an employee working at home has to share that internet connection with a partner, children or roommates who consume bandwidth for their own work or activities such as online gaming or video streaming. At the same time, a residential internet router might not be built to provide the same level of assurance and enterprise-grade security features as the hardware back at the office, exposing corporate networks to unnecessary risk. Examples of wireless internet for working from home,Working from home with fast and reliable internet is necessary for many professions and the applications they use. Here are a few ways wireless connectivity can unlock new capabilities and increased productivity for remote employees. The benefits of wireless business internet for working from home,With a wireless connection to the internet for working from home, employees and their organizations can address disadvantages remote workers may have previously struggled with compared to an in-office experience. While it's possible to run a hardwired enterprise internet connection to an employee's house similar to what you would have in a new office or branch, that approach simply isn't always scalable, cost-effective or even necessary. Organizations may need to deploy business-level internet for working from home to dozens, hundreds or even thousands of employees that will be working in an environment where a limited number of assets are leveraging the connection (i.e. laptop, corporate phone & printer only). By deploying a wireless work from home internet solution, you can save on the installation, maintenance and management overhead enterprise grade lines would require—not to mention the long wait it could potentially take to coordinate installation. In fact, most employees will be able to within minutes, and without any tech support at all. Because the router is controlled by the employer, the corporate IT team can profile equipment in advance and maintain visibility into the employee's network bandwidth, latency and security, keeping them in control of how employees connect while allowing them to ensure a smooth and efficient onboarding and maintenance experience for their most important asset: their employees. At the same time, the wireless business internet router is usually deployed and maintained by the internet service provider, allowing IT to offload those tasks, so they can focus on other initiatives. Unlock enterprise internet at home with Verizon Wireless Business Internet,With , your employees can enjoy an enterprise internet experience even when working from home. Not only does Verizon Wireless Business Internet allow employees to access and leverage the same applications as colleagues back at the office, but it also gives them the same reliable and secure connectivity. This fast and scalable fixed wireless internet access solution makes it simple to get employees working with speeds up to 400 Mbps, delivering all the speed, capacity, reliability and security that employees need to work effectively. Equipment can be set up by the employees themselves, while maintenance and troubleshooting are handled by Verizon's experts. This takes these time-consuming tasks off the hands of the corporate IT team, so employees can get connected without burdening limited internal resources. Learn more about how Verizon can help to into business-grade workspaces, with flexible solutions customized to your business needs. If you'd like to receive new articles, solutions briefs, whitepapers and more—just let us know. . * Indicates a required field. We will follow up from your contact request using the information provided. Choose your country to view contact details. Manage your account or get tools and information. These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information. These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. We use both third party and first party cookies for this purpose. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance. These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly. These cookies may be set through our site by Verizon and third parties. They are used to present Verizon advertising on third party sites that you may visit. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising from Verizon. BackClear Filters,All Consent Allowed,
Learn moreHow to Help Your Employees Be Productive Working From Home Business
We've got some great deals going on right now exclusively for our online customers... chat now to hear more! How to help your employees be productive working from home,Author: Rose de Fremery,, remote work is here to stay, but not everyone is fully convinced of its benefits. According to , 85% of business leaders say that the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive. A mere 12% of them have full confidence that their team is productive in this setting. How can managers ensure that their remote employees are productive working from home? The path to a more productive remote or hybrid workplace lies in and taking advantage of collaboration tools that can enhance productivity. Lack of trust can undermine working from home productivity,While leaders may have misgivings about in-person versus remote work productivity, employees do not. Microsoft's study found that being productive at work. The rate of double-booked meetings increased by 46% per person in the past year, and 42% of participants multitask during meetings. Yet when managers are unable to walk down the hall and see their employees carrying out these activities, they struggle to believe that their staff are actually engaged and productive. Compared with in-person managers, hybrid managers are more likely to say that they have difficulty trusting that their employees will do their best work (49% vs. 36%), and these managers report that they have less visibility into the work their employees do (54% vs. 38%). When they lack effective strategies for managing remote employees, many managers resort to installing tracking software on their employees' devices to monitor their remote work productivity. As Harvard Business Review points out, this approach pits employees and managers against one another and undermines the trust necessary for . It's also an ineffective way to measure or manage remote work productivity. Research shows that business leaders are considering a number of solutions, including: "Increased investments in best-of-breed solutions (73%), remote-working hardware (71%), and best-of-suite solutions (68%) are top of mind; however, these investments need to cater to a diverse range of work styles regardless of location," according to a . Effective strategies for managing remote employees,Overseeing can require different strategies than managing staff in person, and navigating the learning curve can take some time. Managing remote employees involves frequent communication, clear expectations, team bonding, supporting employees' professional growth and taking advantage of modern business collaboration tools. 1. Communicate often and well,To cultivate trust and inspire employee engagement, managers should communicate effectively and often. They should begin by openly acknowledging that remote workers can feel disconnected from the life of the organization, then they can explore ways to bridge this gap via ongoing dialogue with employees. This can look like setting up regular individual and team check-ins using , for example. Remote workers can use the same tools to join virtual lunch-and-learn sessions or town halls with the CEO. Managers should also embrace transparency when communicating with remote workers about decisions they have made. A survey from MIT Sloan Management Review found that who explained their decisions and clarified the rationale behind those choices—especially during periods of economic uncertainty. When employees have more opportunities to share their ideas and voice concerns just as they would in an in-person setting, they are more likely to feel motivated while on the job—and, thus, more productive working from home. With this in mind, consider conducting regular employee surveys to find out which aspects of remote work are going particularly well, which ones are not and how the overall experience could be improved. 2. Set clear expectations,When remote employees don't know what's expected of them, they may become concerned that they're not delivering for their managers. They may feel they're out of sight and out of mind, missing out on opportunities for special assignments or promotions. According to a Pew Research survey on employee views about remote work, one reason why almost one-quarter of workers with jobs that could be done remotely choose to go into their workplace is they feel there are . In a tough economy, they may worry that their positions are no longer secure. You can give your remote employees a better chance to succeed by clearly articulating what you expect them to contribute in their roles and measuring their performance against that standard. As you do, focus on specific deliverables rather than solely the amount of time logged in front of a screen. 3. Encourage team bonding,Remote work can feel lonely and isolating at times— said they felt less connected to co-workers. When your remote employees can't casually mingle with one another in the break room, they miss out on chances to feel connected to the broader organization. You can mitigate this common challenge to remote work productivity and connectivity by creating opportunities for team bonding. Celebrate success often. When you instill a sense of belonging and camaraderie among your employees, you will find them more engaged and enthusiastic about coming to work—whether that commute takes place physically or virtually. 4. Support employees' professional growth,One powerful strategy for improving productivity, whether in person or in a remote setting, is to support your employees' professional growth. Rather than simply focusing on whether they are productive working from home, take some time to assess the quality of their work. When you have strong performers, praise their successes. Also consider creating professional development plans for each of your remote employees in collaboration with the employees themselves. As you do, the conversations you have with them will shed light on what skills already enable your workers to excel while working remotely and which skills could help them accomplish even more impressive results. 5. Take a fresh look at your technology,According to research from Accenture, say they can be productive working from home, at the office or anywhere. These employees are also toward their organization and their team, and their employers observe a 7.4% revenue growth premium per year. The right technology plays a strong role in enabling more effective communication across the board—whether that's between managers and their employees, between different teams or within individual teams. Many businesses already invested in and remote access capabilities in order to help their employees' transition to remote work during the early stages of the pandemic. If managers haven't yet considered how to build on this existing tool set, they may want to take a fresh look at their remote workplace technology stack. Accenture found that 86% of workers surveyed who claim to experience omni-connection also reported upgrades to their company's technology and skill sets, allowing them to work in new ways. How business collaboration tools can help,Modern business collaboration tools, beginning with conferencing services, can help to defeat work uncertainty and allow employees to be more productive working from home. This comes in handy whether they're having their weekly check-in with their manager or attending an important company-wide meeting. Voice calling also plays a key role in remote work productivity. and bring external calling to the Teams platform. Verizon is also the first U.S. carrier to offer Teams Phone Mobile, delivered as , which enables a complete mobile Teams calling experience. gives remote employees a single phone number and allows them to answer it from any device they wish—whether that's a smartphone, a laptop or a desk phone—so they never miss an important call. Set your remote employees up for success,Although remote work poses unique challenges for employees and their managers, particularly when managers become concerned that their remote staff isn't fully engaged or when remote employees don't have the support they need to succeed, it is still possible to improve remote work productivity. Frequent communication, clear expectations, team bonding and support for professional growth, particularly when paired with the right digital workplace solutions, can set up your remote employees—and, ultimately, your organization as a whole—for lasting success. Discover how Verizon's transform your employees' home offices into business-grade workspaces. If you'd like to receive new articles, solutions briefs, whitepapers and more—just let us know. . * Indicates a required field. We will follow up from your contact request using the information provided. Choose your country to view contact details. Manage your account or get tools and information. These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information. These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. We use both third party and first party cookies for this purpose. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance. These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly. These cookies may be set through our site by Verizon and third parties. They are used to present Verizon advertising on third party sites that you may visit. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising from Verizon. BackClear Filters,All Consent Allowed
Learn moreRemote Learning Success in Fort Wayne K-12 Schools Business
We've got some great deals going on right now exclusively for our online customers... chat now to hear more! Choose your country to view contact details. Manage your account or get tools and information. Fort Wayne delivers remote learning during a pandemic in record time,Indiana's Fort Wayne Community Schools district teams up with Verizon to deliver connectivity solutions to thousands of students just in time for a new—and most unusual—school year. Founded in 1857, Fort Wayne Community Schools (FWCS) has grown to be the largest school district in the state of Indiana. With over 50 K-12 campuses (including a vocational campus) and nearly 30,000 students, FWCS boasts a nearly 90% graduation rate and prides itself on the quality of education it consistently delivers to its student body. However, the 2019-2020 and 2020- 2021 school years were an especially difficult challenge that put FWCS to the test. The Coronavirus forced a shift from school instruction delivery at 50 localized educational sites to tens of thousands of residential homes, some of which were even out-of-state due to the pandemic. Here's how FWCS met this challenge by providing maximum connectivity to remote learners at maximum speed of implementation. In 2015, FWCS developed a one-to-one (1-1) plan, which called for ensuring that every student in the district would have their own device, be it laptop or tablet, by the start of the 2020–2021 school year. By February 2020, FWCS was only 700 devices short of the 1-1 goal, which still gave the district plenty of time to achieve it by the start of the next school year in August 2020. The notable caveat here is that the 1-1 device plan did not assume that all students would have remote connectivity; the goal at this point was to simply ensure that all students had a digital device that they could use for their in-school learning and optionally at home. Not wanting to wait an additional seven months to obtain the remainder of the devices, the school superintendent at the time, Dr. Wendy Robinson, gave the go-ahead to purchase the remaining 700 devices immediately. Little did any of the officials at FWCS know how fortuitous that decision would be. Less than a month later, in March 2020, the Coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. By the time May 2020 came around, it became evident that the restrictions of the pandemic were shifting from what most people thought was going to be a temporary change to traditional on-site learning to a more permanent, remote learning scenario. This meant FWCS needed to look beyond the 1-1 device goal and more toward the 1-1 connectivity gap. Sure, maybe every student had a device they could use for classroom attendance, but did every student have the connectivity they needed in order to attend virtual classes every day?,Jack Byrd, Chief Systems Officer of FWCS, states, "You also have to define what is internet connectivity. Some of the stories we heard were that when we were shut down in Spring of 2020, kids were using their parents' cell phones." When parents started to return to the workforce in the fall of 2020, students who were once connected would no longer have that resource. Chief Systems Officer of FWCS,In its quest to ensure all students could have their own connected device, FWCS found that despite other providers who were offering lower cost connectivity solutions, with the reliability that the students needed at their homes, the lower cost solutions couldn't guarantee that those students would have the connectivity resources necessary to maintain a longer-term remote learning model. Also, there was no guarantee that a student would continue to reside at the same location throughout the upcoming school year (more on that later). Determining who the qualifying students were to receive internet connectivity devices at the district's expense entailed understanding how many of them qualified for the federally funded Free and Reduced Lunch program, which, according to Byrd, was roughly 70% (give or take a few points) of families, since a single family may have more than one child in the same school district. Based on these figures, FWCS came to Verizon with an initial order of 7,000 MiFis, to which they later added an additional 500. To help ensure security, each MiFi (i.e. "hotspot") was configured with a Verizon Mobile Device Management (MDM) software solution. By the time the decision was made in mid-July regrading the attendance plan—in-person, blended or virtual learning—for the 2020-2021 school year, Byrd and his team had a mere two weeks to preconfigure and distribute the first batch of 7,000 MiFis to families, in addition to creating training videos on how to set them up. It was not an easy task—each device had to be unboxed, turned on, configured with MDM software, and repackaged—but one that together, FWCS and Verizon were able to accomplish. "And despite the fact that we had shipments coming in from multiple warehouses and shippers, Verizon was still able to track it all and ensure every device got to where it needed to be," added Mark Resor, Senior Technical Support Specialist for FWCS. And even when there were problems, by being in constant communication with Resor and his support team, Verizon was able to work quickly to resolve any issues. "We never felt like we weren't going to make it," says Resor. "There was always a confidence that we would.",On the importance of picking a lasting partner, Byrd emphasizes, "The two-week notice is what solidified our relationship with Verizon; they were in the trenches with us and that's what meant the world to us.",Due to the unique nature of this new and unusual school year, many students had to temporarily move out of the school district, and even the state. FWCS speculates that one of the reasons for this kind of student displacement could have been a result of students needing to stay with relatives (such as grandparents) while parents had to return to work and couldn't be at home for their children during school hours. Because of Verizon's nationwide coverage, this challenge was easily overcome by shipping hotspots to students at their remote locations, a solution that would not have been possible had FWCS opted to use a land-based or local Wi-Fi infrastructure. "We had students who were participating from California, Texas, Upper Michigan, east coast, west coast, all over the United States," begins Resor. "We would have never had that opportunity with a landline provider.",Senior Technical Support Specialist for FWCS,Pre-pandemic, Verizon and FWCS already had a good working relationship, but the manner in which both Verizon and FWCS were able to come together in such a time of crisis and deliver a big win for the school district was, for Byrd, the mark of a true partnership, grounded by an excellent reputation. "When we do projects, we always open them up to other vendors, but one of the things I always put on our evaluation matrix is the trustworthiness of the vendor. "In terms of how Verizon performed on this project, they get a 10 for trustworthiness. They were there for us after the sale and we're confident they will be there for us in the future.",At Verizon, we take pride in the fact that we run to a crisis, not away from it. We are equally as proud to partner with customers such as the tireless and hard-working team at Fort Wayne Community Schools, who continue to help us deliver better results and solutions for students and families. FWCS, you also get a 10. To learn more about Verizon's distance learning solutions, visit us at:Choose your country to view contact details. Manage your account or get tools and information. These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information. These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. We use both third party and first party cookies for this purpose. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance. These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly. These cookies may be set through our site by Verizon and third parties. They are used to present Verizon advertising on third party sites that you may visit. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising from Verizon. BackClear Filters,All Consent Allowed
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