A brand New Year is here and like many people all over the country, this will mark the first week back in the office for many. As the excitement of the festive season, and the break that some get to enjoy, is now over, planning and preparing the office space for the next 12 months is likely to be the focus for the next few weeks.
Preparing the office space takes many forms, but we are just going to focus on the IT side of things.
Considering that businesses are predominantly reliant on IT technology and the web in order to do their day to day tasks, to ensure that the New Year starts off on the right note, it certainly helps to go through a helpful checklist of things that will need your attention as the office gets back into work mode.
The checklist that you will use, whether it is our list or one that you develop to suit your particular office requirements, should have a healthy mixture of the IT basics as well as points relating to your hardware. And you should give quite a bit of extra attention to your cybersecurity.
To get going, it helps to give the office a complete once over, giving a close look at your current hardware. Some things might need to be fixed or completely replaced, and you will want to make a note of that before you get started, so that you don’t waste time later on by having to put your checklist on hold while you deal with the hardware issue.
Your IT Checklist
- Team up with IT
Whether it is the one dedicated IT person in your company, or the outsourced IT business that generally takes care of your requirements, when you start out your checklist you should do it with the person responsible for the office technology.
This is important because it will be that person or company who will end up having to either fix what is broken or introduce a new system, so you will want to have them close by, keeping note of where they will be needed.
- Follow up on loaned IT stuff
This point is particularly important for those returning from work from home orders. If you have loads of staff who have taken IT things like laptops and printers home with them, you will want to make sure that they return the technology once they come back to the office. So add this to your list.
- Make sure software is updated
If staff have been out of the office for longer than the holiday period, and PCs have not been turned on in a while, you are likely to encounter either a Microsoft update or a driver update when everyone comes back to work. You should make a point of asking staff to make sure that when an update pops up they install it, or you can call in IT and let them check for updates and run the updates themselves. This will save time, and headaches, later on.
- Look over your security setup
From doing the basics like making sure the antivirus is up to date, to introducing new measures to combat the possibility of a security risk or problem cropping up, this point is a vital one for your return to office checklist. This point might also be best left in the hands of your IT person or outsourced company, as they will be well aware of the risks you are facing in 2022.
- Check connectivity
Technically, if you are working with a reputable service provider, internet connectivity should not be a problem. But the unexpected can happen and your service could be offline when you return to the workplace. For this reason, it can help to return to the office a day early, to check that the network is still up and ready to use, so that when staff do return they can get right back into the swing of things.
