How to ensure high-quality and safe remote work: important steps

The coronavirus outbreak forced the business to promptly switch to a new format of work. That was a real challenge for Ukrainian companies; however, those who started their journey of digital transformation long before lockdown were able to switch to remote work much easier.

Sergey Detyuk, Chief Executive Officer at Metinvest Digital, shared his experience of successful transition to remote work with Channel 24.

According to him, their company, like many others in the world, did not expect to find itself in the situation where it would be necessary to transfer many employees to remote work in a very short time. “It was a stress test, which, in my opinion, we successfully passed: now more than 10,000 employees of Metinvest Group work remotely,” said Sergey Detyuk.

He named several important components that allowed the corporation to adapt to new working conditions almost painlessly.

Strategy

Covid-19 was a kind of test for the IT strategy for compliance with up-to-date requirements and ability to withstand the so-called VUCA-world. The strategy is obviously systemic steps and investments in the development of the company's integrated IT infrastructure.

Those companies that used a strategic approach to IT development were able to quickly and almost painlessly adapt to new realities. The way the IT departments overcame the crisis: assessment of actions and steps undertaken in the past.

Flexibility and adaptability

The cloud future is here. Lockdown also confirmed the correctness of corporate infrastructure migration to the cloud and more active use of cloud technologies, in general.

Flexibility and adaptability are synonyms of modern IT infrastructure. Thanks to transition to the Microsoft Azure platform, which started last year, we were well-prepared. Cloud technologies make the IT more flexible, enable it to respond much faster to crises and challenges, and most importantly, scale infrastructure without significant capital investments.

Communication

Another important factor is to ensure continuous, safe and comfortable work of employees at home. Remote work requires corporate tools to be user friendly and accessible on various platforms and devices. For example, we get the most out of Office 365 tools: secure information sharing, project co-work, online meetings, video conferencing, etc.

Safety

Remote work is certainly a challenge for the company’s cybersecurity. Now, each person, their computers, or other devices should also be considered in the information security concept. This is the so-called “Zero Trust Tolerance” cybersecurity model, in the discussion of which I was lucky to participate at the Microsoft Global CIO Summit at the end of that year. According to this model, given the current level of technology development, a cyber threat may come from anywhere and the business will never have a 100% guarantee of cyber security.

Digital culture

And finally, the most important is people. It does not matter how much investments you make in IT if they do not have any value for your employees and do not consider business needs. Systems and technologies alone do not solve business problems. Only when your employees begin to use new tools, IT services and systems actively, the whole company will benefit as well.

Digital transformation is about culture internal change first and about new technologies second. Successful experience in remote work inspired us for further improvement in this area. We have already speeded up a pilot project in the company to move most of functions to remote work on a continuous basis.