The Entrepreneur's Guide to Remote Tech for a Hybrid Workforce Don't miss these must-haves when it comes to empowering the flexible workforce of the future.

As companies continue to allow employees to work remotely and opt to implement remote work into their long-term strategies, it's smart to reconsider the tools utilized to empower their employees to do their best work. After all, you can't send employees to far-flung places without the right tools and systems and expect them to be as productive as they were in the workplace before the pandemic began.

No one knows this better than Erik Day, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Small Business at Dell Technologies. Flexible work – a hybrid approach where employees will work in an office part of the time and at home the rest of the time – is likely to be the "new standard" for business as we navigate the pandemic and beyond, he says.

"At Dell Technologies, we had already been leaning into flexible work," Day explains. "Before March 2020, when we announced a global work-from-home policy, 65 percent of team members were leveraging our flexible work policies, and we had approximately 30 percent of team members working remotely on any given day. Our connected workplace infrastructure set us up well for the unexpected – over a weekend, our IT team had 120,000 people up and running to work remotely. Today more than 90 percent of our workforce is remote."

Since the onset of the pandemic, businesses have begun to "realize the flexibility [remote work] brings to employees, the way we think about different locations, to the way we do events and travel, the way we acquire and develop talent, and more," he says. "Having the right technology – both at home and in the workplace – will ensure that the interactions between the two are seamless."

Here, Day outlines the technology that's necessary to power remote teams as we navigate the "new normal" in business.

Ensure productivity with up-to-date hardware and software.

If your employees are slogging away on older laptops with outdated systems, that is almost certainly affecting their productivity. Making sure employees are equipped with new, updated hardware with well-functioning software is paramount to enabling everyone to work efficiently, Day says.

"Having a strong amount of memory, free hard drive space, the latest and greatest in processing speed, along with the internet speed where you work, is the perfect combination for high productivity," Day explains.

Without in-person meetings and the water-cooler talk that's common in the office environment, employees who work from home are typically in front of the computers for more hours during the day. Day recommends Dell's sleek and powerful XPS line, as well as Latitude which "has been a staple for B2B" for many years.

When it comes to monitors, Dell's are #1 worldwide for seven consecutive years and #1 in North America for 21 consecutive years. Day recommends Dell's lineup of UltraSharp Monitors for their resolution, sharpness, and beautiful colors. They also come in various sizes and configurations to meet different work situations.

A hybrid approach to the cloud.

Whether you're working on-site in the workplace or remote at home, having access to your company's data and assets is critical to collaborating, make sales, and communicating with customers. Day recommends that businesses utilize a combination of public cloud services and private, on-premises cloud for your company's most sensitive data and workloads.

For instance, APEX Cloud services, which offers companies a range of on-premises cloud solutions with consumption-based and as-a-service solutions optimized for the way your business consumes infrastructure. While owning and maintaining an on-premises cloud service sounds expensive, Dell says it can be significantly less expensive than relying exclusively on the public cloud. "Ensuring that you have a multi-cloud environment can maximize security, productivity, and cost," Day says.

Access to tech support.

Did your child accidentally spill their orange juice on your keyboard? Working from home means your work devices are subjected to an entirely different array of hazards. Who are you going to call for tech help?

Day recommends that companies invest in an on-site tech support service to make sure your employees and your business avoid downtime as much as possible. With Dell's ProSupport suite of support services, companies get 24x7 tech support to help get individual devices and entire systems back up and running fast.

Encourage flexibility.

Balancing the challenges of working remotely can be stressful for some employees. Day says one of the best ways to maintain productivity no matter where people work is for businesses to encourage flexibility — not only with schedules but with their technology as well.

Working remote means employees are increasingly conducting meetings with customers and clients over video. Maybe some employees would benefit from special lighting or audio equipment? Perhaps they might need a small standing desk to make the long hours of working from home healthier? Or maybe they could use a few decorative items to simply brighten up their workspace?

Companies that understand an individual employee's specific needs and provide a stipend so they can get the equipment they need for a home office can go a long way for that person not only maintaining productivity but physical and mental health as well, Day says.

Click here to learn more about how Dell Technologies can help power your flexible workforce now and in the future.