Top Takeaways from Dizzion’s Remote Working Panel Discussion

Last Wednesday, Dizzion had the pleasure of hosting three remote working experts in the online panel: 3 Industry Experts Discuss their Remote Working Wins & Challenges. Felix Serrano, CEO of Americas at itelBPO, Chris Wirth, Director of Guest Services at Hyatt Global Contact Center, and Doug Berry, Senior Director at Concentrix, discussed challenges, success stories and valuable insights to their remote working environments. The topics addressed included:

• Onboarding and provisioning remote workers
• Overcoming security concerns with work at home staff
• Visibility into the home environment
• Learnings and lessons from operating a remote working program

Here are the top three takeaways for companies looking to embrace the power and versatility of remote working programs.

Implementing a successful program takes extensive research and knowledge

Felix Serrano touched on some of the myths and preconceived notions that many individuals and businesses hold about the definition of a remote working program. He noted:

“It’s interesting to see how many in the industry have a very specific, niche idea of what it should be.”

Whether companies view remote working programs as overflow capacity for their physical locations or strictly seasonal solutions, it’s important to find a provider and solution that will address the pain points of a business.

“It takes a ton of education to talk to each brand about what their desired outcomes are to find out what’s the right model for them at any point in time,” stated Felix.

Company culture must extend beyond the four walls of an organization

It’s easy to feel a company’s culture when employees operate within the four wall of an office. However, transferring that culture to employees who operate from the home environment and across state and national borders can be a huge task for any company operating a remote working program. When asked what he wished he knew before diving into the remote working space, Doug Berry stated:

“When I first started with work at home, one of the biggest learnings for me was the level of effort required to make sure that your workers are included in the company…and that your culture extends out to your home workers.”

Whether your business model already includes remote working programs, or you’re just starting out, it’s important to make sure that all employees feel they are a part of the same organization whether they operate within your brick and mortar location[s] or not.

Some security measures are the same, but some should be different

With cybersecurity becoming more challenging, the issue of security is often the reason some companies don’t implement remote working programs. However, the panelist agreed that security doesn’t have to hold organizations back.

Chris Wirth noted that at Hyatt, agents don’t directly take credit card information over the phone regardless of their location, but not all security measures are the same. To compensate for not being able to see a remote agent, however, Hyatt’s work at home agents go through an additional security and verification step.

“Our work at home agents are required to go through a multifactor authentication process … before they can get into our network,” he explained. “[That’s] something that we don’t have to do with our brick and mortar associates, but we do require from our work from home agents.”

To get more advice from these three industry heavy hitters, listen to the entire session!