What do Businesses Need to Know About Pandemic Fatigue?

True in life as in business, tough times can make us stronger. Yet, despite how comforting these words sound, many organisations have struggled to survive over the past year – and there’s still much to consider.

It’s true that, in many respects, successful organisations and employees alike are used to staying alert and dealing with the uncertainties that working life throws at them. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has meant this state of being has become a constant.

Living in a perpetual state of emergency, the so-called ‘new normal’, doesn’t allow us to ever put our guard down – a truth that threatens our health as well as our businesses.

What is pandemic fatigue?

Over the past months many of us have experienced something experts are naming ‘pandemic fatigue’. It’s a state of emotional burn out brought on because our fight or flight system (the emotional reaction to stress that has been otherwise energising us through the pandemic) is totally overloaded. When this happens, the constant flow of adrenaline in our systems starts to drain and apathy settles in.

Whilst an ongoing and successful vaccine roll-out has brought with it some much-needed hope, feelings of exhaustion and hopelessness can quickly overwhelm positive emotions. After all, emotional endurance dwindles over time and, given the nature of the pandemic, we don’t have the same sense of security we could fall back on pre-pandemic.

What are the signs of pandemic fatigue?

It’s going to be important to be able to spot signs of pandemic fatigue in ourselves as well as those we work alongside. After all, pandemic fatigue can result in a lax approach to public health measures (wearing masks, washing hands, social distancing), which could land your business with stiff fines – even closure in extreme cases.

Additionally, as employers, we owe a duty of care to our staff under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Indeed, it’s one of the reasons H&S training exists – all reasonable steps must be taken to ensure the health, safety, and wellbeing of those in our employment.

Below are some signs to watch out for in yourself and your employees:

  • Aforementioned indifference or non-adherence to coronavirus safety measures
  • Sleeping enough, yet still feeling exhausted
  • Feeling more irritable or impatient than usual
  • Feeling stressed by tasks you usually complete with ease
  • Feeling disinterested or apathetic towards activities you used to find enjoyable
  • Feelings of detachment or hopelessness about the future
  • Lack of focus and concentration, even on day-to-day tasks
  • Increased consumption of alcohol, food, or other substances (often used to manage above feelings)

Managing pandemic fatigue

It’s difficult to over-communicate at times like these, so don’t be afraid to start difficult conversations. How you do this is up to you; some may prefer individual managers to speak to their teams (if the business is big enough), others may prefer to circulate information and/or resources via a company newsletter or wellbeing email.

Be prepared to have private conversations with employees that are struggling. If they are feeling overwhelmed, connect them to available COVID-19 mental health resources or other forms of counselling your business may have access to.

Remember to check in on a regular basis with your remote staff. Make sure they have the tools and equipment they need to work efficiently and safely from home and, whether you/your staff are back in the office or at home, the below methods can help reduce the impact of pandemic fatigue and help us to stay strong and resilient:

  • Monitor your social media / ‘doom scrolling’

At the moment, one of the biggest distractions is the news. Checking for COVID-19 updates, or clicking on news alerts as and when they pop up, is going to be hard to resist.

But be wary of scrolling yourself into despair. Relying on unreputable sources for news about the outbreak can fuel anxiety, making it difficult to concentrate and putting your mental health at risk.

  • Replenish your energy

Burnout can occur when you feel stuck, resulting in feeling out of control, so factoring in relaxation activities is more than just icing on the cake when it comes to wellbeing.

Going for walks/runs, enjoying a bath or a book, cooking, baking, gardening, or any activity you can safely enjoy will go a long way to restoring balance and upkeeping motivation levels.

  • Stick to a routine

Of particular importance to those working from home, finding a new routine and sticking to it can be a big help when it comes to battling pandemic fatigue.

Routines are safe and predictable and, as such, are a powerful antidote to stress because they create feelings of stability.

  • Don’t cut yourself off

It’s natural, when we feel stressed, to push friends, family, and colleagues away out of frustration, but this will only increase stress long-term.

Teamwork and communication is the key here, so keep communication lines open and don’t be afraid to show a little vulnerability. It helps to know we’re all in the same boat sometimes. We can all help one another maintain hope.

5 Must-Have Modern Slavery Controls For Retail Businesses

In July 2020, an undercover report found workers in Leicester making clothes for online fashion retailer Boohoo being paid as little as £3.50 an hour. Later in December 2020, the Guardian published another article alleging that Boohoo was selling clothes made in a factory in Pakistan where workers were earning as little as 29 pence an hour.

Figures from last year reveal that almost 30 modern slavery victims were found every day in the UK last year. Latest estimates from the International Labour Organization also show that modern slavery and forced labour affects almost 25 million people worldwide.

With the increase in public awareness, there is growing pressure on UK-based retailers from investors to comply with modern slavery laws. Remaining diligent about ethical supply chain practices will set retailers in good stead, both ethically and legislatively speaking.

Performing due diligence is also best practice when it comes to protecting your brand and meeting customer requirements – after all, being linked to human trafficking and labour exploitation is extremely damaging to the credibility of any retailer, and rightfully so.

So how can retail businesses ensure ethical supply chain practices? Here are five Modern Slavery controls all retailers ought to practice.

Make a commitment

All large companies with an annual turnover of £36m or more are required to publish annual statements on what they are doing to tackle forced labour in their operations and supply chains under the 2015 Modern Slavery Act. However, it’s still important for smaller retailers to make a strong commitment against modern slavery.

Assigning board level responsibility for these best practice policies and laying out what the company wants to achieve in preventing modern slavery will help retailers take meaningful action.

Establish good recruitment practices

Experience shows that the recruitment stage is often where workers are most at risk from modern slavery exploitation, especially where third party labour recruiters are involved, and even more so where workers are migrant. Therefore, retailers must pay particular attention to the recruitment process.

Ensure you establish due diligence checks when appointing labour providers and develop a written policy stating that the cost of recruitment is a business cost, not to be passed onto workers.

Good record-keeping and monitoring

Ensure you establish checks of workers’ home addresses and check occupancy figures here (those held in modern slavery are often housed in overcrowded, cramped conditions). Migrant workers should have access to their passports and companies should check bank accounts to identify wages aren’t being collected by one account.

Team leaders/supervisors should be comfortable monitoring, recording, and reporting any concerning signs in the physical wellbeing of employees, e.g., bad hygiene, extreme fatigue, or malnourishment. They should feel comfortable approaching workers informally to discuss any issues.

Assess where your greatest risks are (then act to tackle them)

Draw up an initial high-level assessment of your supply chain, including direct and indirect suppliers, labour providers and contractors to identify low, medium and high-risk suppliers (consider, for example, using self-assessment questionnaires to gather information from potential suppliers).

Based on your available resources, take immediate steps to reduce the risk of any high-risk suppliers, e.g., by requiring them to establish grievance or whistleblowing procedures. Ensure you develop channels for gathering and managing any future risk information.

Train staff

Most employees are not even aware that modern slavery is an issue – that’s why training must start by raising awareness on the subject and presenting facts/figures on the severity of modern slavery in the UK and around the globe.

As well as training managers/supervisors on particular red flags to look out for in employees and how to raise and report these issues, employees across the board will benefit from awareness training which provides the tools and knowledge they need to identify and report concerns about modern slavery.

How can we help?

Increasing the levels of transparency and awareness are paramount when it comes to complying with modern slavery laws. Retail businesses can use awareness training to empower employees to spot the red flags of modern slavery and educate them about its prevalence and the areas it’s more likely to take place.

Find out how DeltaNet International can help with our range of Modern Slavery eLearning courses.

What is Adaptive Learning?

What is Adaptive Learning?

Adaptive learning (sometimes called adaptive teaching, adaptive instruction, or intelligent tutoring) is an educational method which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to present users with individually customised learning programs.

Adaptive learning works by gathering data before, during, and after the learning process and using this mined information intelligently to create optimised learning paths for each user.

Therefore, as the user continues to complete more training and take more assessments, the platform is able to identify and feed back only the content that is relevant to them, based off their performance and confidence levels. In doing so, it will also address their unique requirements and learning preferences, presenting the type of content (e.g., gamified courses, immersive learning, and so on.) that best appeals to the user and that they have engaged with well in the past.

In other words, adaptive learning platforms can automatically and intelligently determine which learning content, activities, and techniques will benefit the learner most and provide the best learning results.

Business benefits of adaptive learning

Adaptive learning is being increasingly used by businesses for mandatory corporate training – particularly that which, in the past, may have seen lower engagement or retention levels from employees. After all, it can feel frustrating to go over old learning content that you already know when you have a job to do!

It’s easy to see how adaptive learning can save time by allowing learners to bypass information they already have a clear understanding of and by presenting only the information necessary to become more competent or to upskill them.

Ease of use

Adaptive learning happens automatically and with minimum human intervention, so it’s a great tool for Learning and Development Managers to utilise as it affords them more time to focus on their goals and the success of their employees.

What’s more, adaptive learning can be rolled out quickly, with minimum hassle, and in direct response to any key-risk areas identified – so it’s useful for organisations that want to remain agile and responsive.

Improved knowledge retention

High engagement means higher knowledge retention and by utilising and suggesting a variety of learning styles, adaptive learning can be used to increase knowledge retention by presenting learning content in the styles that best suit the individual learner.

Additionally, it doesn’t devalue employee time by forcing them to complete unnecessary training, so adaptive learning has the added benefit of increased morale and commitment when it comes to training activities.

Increased ROI

Training is designed to add value to your business, not detract from it. Adaptive learning means you can reduce the time spent on unnecessary training and training administration, resulting in increased productivity and better informed, more motivated employees. It can also help to minimise the cost of external recruitment since members of staff progress organically, at their own pace.

To learn more about our adaptive learning product offering, please visit our Collections pages.

Exciting News! DeltaNet International joins the Marlowe PLC Group

Exciting News! DeltaNet International joins the Marlowe PLC Group

As we head forwards into 2021, we’ve got some very exciting news to share here at DeltaNet International. We have joined forces with Marlowe PLC to form its eLearning business.

Marlowe are a UK leader in business critical services and software which assure safety and regulatory compliance. The acquisition will bolster the Marlowe group’s market leading position in the UK Health and Safety market and Marlowe have made a significant and exciting investment in the future of DeltaNet International.

Speaking on the deal, our MD, Darren Hockley said:

“This acquisition is very important for our continued growth and we’re pleased to align ourselves with a well-established presence like Marlowe. Businesses are increasingly looking to work with companies that deliver a broader, more comprehensive service and collectively we can now fulfil more of their needs.

“We are proud of what we’ve achieved together since 1999 and equally excited about what lies ahead, where we are taking the company, and how we are looking after our clients. We have exciting plans for the ongoing growth of the business this year and beyond.”

We’re also pleased to congratulate Stacey Taylor on her new investment as a shareholder into the business. Our newest Board Member, Stacey currently heads up our Content Team and we’re looking towards a very bright future under her lead.

Watch this space!

Protecting Homeworkers’ Health and Safety

The recent HSE update to their guidance on protecting homeworkers has become even more pertinent following the new Government directive to work from home where possible.

Just as many workers were returning to their offices, albeit in a very different capacity to which they left them, the trend is now set to reverse with numbers working from home likely to rise again.

The updated guidance reiterates the need for employers to demonstrate the same duty of care towards employees who work from home as they do for on-site staff.

HSE guidance and how training can help

The importance of adhering to the guidelines is twofold:

  • To look after your employees and ensure their wellbeing, both physical and mental
  • To ensure that your business is compliant and operating within the guidelines, negating the possibility of any future accusations of not following the correct procedures which could leave the company open to financial penalties.

In order to help keep your employees safe and your business compliant, eLearning can help employers ensure that they are providing the best possible level of care to the health and safety needs of their employees.

Employees can take the training at home and as they are likely to be in their current working environment they can make any changes necessary to improve their safety quickly and easily.

eLearning can cover the key areas contained within the HSE guidelines and is ideally suited to ensuring that you and your employees are working in a safe environment.

The guidelines refer specifically to DSE (Display Screen Equipment), Mental Health and Stress and state that:

As an employer when someone is working from home, permanently or temporarily, you should consider:

  • How will you keep in touch with them?
  • What work activity will they be doing (and for how long)?
  • Can it be done safely?
  • Do you need to put control measures in place to protect them?

This is as important now as it was when employees first started to work from home on a widespread scale, following restrictions imposed in March.

It could be argued that it is actually even more important as time has progressed, with feelings of isolation likely to have grown the longer home working has gone on.

To say that everybody who has switched to working from home has suffered mentally isn’t true; studies have shown that a high number of people have flourished, citing increased flexibility, lack of commute and reduced distractions as just some of the reasons for a reduction in stress and improvement in overall mental health.

DSE and working from home

One of the key things to consider about the home office space is DSE. We all know that incorrectly set up screens can cause musculoskeletal issues and other health problems and that this has to be a core area of concern for employers moving towards homeworking; but how do employers and employees alike mitigate this risk?

The answer is with targeted training that can be delivered at home, namely eLearning. Getting your employees to undergo training specifically focused on DSE will help to achieve the goals of ensuring their safety and demonstrating you taking responsibility as an employer.

Training should include points such as:

  • How to set up DSE correctly to maximise safety
  • Exercises to minimise the risks of injury
  • Importance of regular breaks
  • Relevant legislation

To discover more about successfully training your employees to set up their DSE safely, we have a number of options available.

Stress

The HSE guidance explicitly mentions the greater need for employers to ensure the mental health of their homeworking staff is protected.

Studies have shown that a number of people have seen improvements to their mental health since working from home, citing increased flexibility, lack of commute and reduced distractions as just some of the reasons for a reduction in stress.

However, for a great many others, feelings of isolation, loneliness and detachment from the workplace has led to a rise in stress and a deterioration in mental health.

This is where managers have had to step up and will continue to need to do so. Increased communication from managers is vital to help with feelings of isolation, as is the need to be able to recognise early warning signs and symptoms of stress in employees.

We have a set of resources specifically designed to help employees recognise their own signs of stress and to help manage it, along with resources for managers to learn how to manage stress in their team.

Home Working Risk Assessments

Many of the risks inherent to homeworking are the same as working in the office: setting up display screen equipment correctly, minimising slips and trips and taking extra precautions if lone working for example.

Home working environments should have had a thorough risk assessment carried out at the outset. Even if this was the case, now is a good time to be re-visiting it to ensure that the working environment remains safe.

We created a Home Working Risk Assessment for precisely this purpose and provides a comprehensive tool for ensuring the safety if your employees.

It focuses on three core areas: your home workspace, working design and taking care of yourself. From looking after your mental health all the way to electrical safety, no homeworking topic is neglected. There is also an extra section for people with line management responsibilities.

Summary

The recent updates to the HSE guidelines about protecting home workers are a timely reminder that we cannot be complacent about the health and safety of homeworkers.

Coupled with the new advice from the government regarding working from home where possible, now is the perfect opportunity to refresh your employees training to maximise their safety.

Our solutions provide a high quality, cost effective solution to your training needs in order to mitigate risk and keep your employees safe.

Every Workplace Death is a Tragedy

Our physical wellbeing at work is in the spotlight like never before. We are still in the midst of one of the biggest shifts in working culture in living memory, with the coronavirus pandemic and its aftermath set to change everything from the amount we work from home to the layouts of our offices.

With workplace health and safety in the headlines, in July the HSE released its annual report into workplace fatality figures. (They don’t include deaths directly resulting from COVID-19.) The good news is that they are lower than before – 111 in 2019/20, a drop from 147 the previous year. This might be due to the break in many physical jobs the pandemic caused and the rise of homeworking for many, but though every workplace death is a tragedy, a fall is a good sign no matter what the cause. The long-term trend shows a steady decline in deaths.

Delving deeper into the figures, they tell an interesting story about the risks across industries – and how workplace health and safety still has a way to go before we get the fatality figures down to zero.

Construction and Other High-Risk Industries

The HSE website includes a breakdown by industry of the workplace fatalities. This shows construction had twice the amount of workplace deaths as the next highest industry, agriculture.

In many ways, the industries most likely to suffer tragedies like workplace deaths are no surprise: they are often more physical in their day to day work and involve work in difficult conditions, such as on buildings in need of repair or using machinery. There are more opportunities in these lines of work to fall victim to the most common causes of workplace deaths: falls from height, being struck by a moving vehicle and being struck by a moving object. This underlines the need for robust risk assessments and safety measures in place to protect all workers and members of the public.

New Challenges

Recently it’s been almost impossible to avoid the phrase “the new normal”. Used to describe everything from new workplace layouts to socialising over Zoom, the phrase covers both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Unfortunately, nobody can agree exactly what “the new normal” will mean at this point.

Health and safety will need to stay front-and-centre of companies’ minds for the foreseeable future. Training will be even more important for all employees, including those working from home, and engaging employees in this learning will be vital.

The challenge facing employers in the future, especially in high-risk industries, is how to protect people from COVID-19 whilst not neglecting their traditional health and safety arrangements. All previous protections and control measures must be in place, even if they have to be adapted to meet the new guidelines.

It remains to be seen how COVID-19 and the associated changes to workplaces will affect the workplace fatality figures in the years to come. With appropriate training and keeping the focus on all aspects of workers’ health and safety, employers can play their part in bringing that figure lower and lower.

NEW RELEASE: Global Anti-Money Laundering eLearning Course

A record number of anti-money laundering (AML) fines were issued worldwide in 2019. US regulators and authorities took the lead, handing out fines totalling over £6.2bn – twice as many fines as UK regulators.

This shows that the global impact of money laundering is showing no signs of abating. Regulators are continuing to crack down against illegally obtained wealth, including businesses that fail to prevent money laundering. For global businesses, preventing money laundering makes good sense and is vital for securing the future of a business. Non-compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) laws can result in heavy financial penalties and loss of reputation – two factors which can threaten the stability of global businesses.

While enhanced customer due diligence and internal procedures and monitoring are important, it is equally important to raise awareness on the pitfalls of money laundering within your workforce. Providing relevant AML training to employees is your first line of defence and ensures your staff are well prepared to spot and deal with any money laundering threats that come their way.

Our new eLearning course focuses on raising awareness on anti-money laundering (AML) legislation and its impact on organisations and their employees. The course is designed keeping global businesses in mind, covering general legal requirements for anti-money laundering on a global level, with a focus on the key roles and responsibilities that help organisations to comply.

Delivered in an immersive and engaging format, this online training course is divided into five modules covering legislation, responsibility, and policy, the definition of money laundering, signs of unusual activity and how to report unusual activity. The course can be taken all at once for a holistic, detailed introduction to AML, or learners can take and revisit separate modules to suit their schedule and preferred learning style.

Find out more about our new course HERE.

The Global Anti-Money Laundering eLearning course joins our suite of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Training.

Enabling Workplace Learning In The Time Of A Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has hit businesses very hard. Many organisations have successfully transitioned to remote working to continue with business as usual. But for some, it has also meant putting part of their workforce on furlough. While furloughed employees can no longer work or generate revenue for their employers, government guidance suggests they can certainly continue with learning and development. There is an opportunity here for furloughed employees and their employers to use the current situation as a means to gain skills and retain talent. In this blog post, we analyse the importance and the means of enabling workplace learning in the time of a global health pandemic.

Importance of Continued Professional Development

Continued Professional Development (CPD) enables learning and development in the workplace and helps create a skilled, knowledgeable workforce while boosting the working relationship between employers and employees. A skilled workforce is also instrumental in building a business’s reputation among customers and clients as well as future employees. While many employers may be tempted to put a pause on professional development under the current circumstances, it is certainly worth considering the impact of CPD during a pandemic. During this sobering period, CPD can help with both upskilling and maintaining knowledge as businesses and industries adapt to new ways of working. So while CPD may not be on top of the list of priorities for many businesses and employees right now, it is important to not overlook it completely and enable some form of learning and development.

Keeping Engaged with Learning and Development

For employers, promoting a culture of learning and development is often linked to business growth – it helps employees develop skills, retain knowledge and boosts productivity. In the current situation, learning and development can also offer a means to keep employers and employees engaged. With the move to remote working, learning and development programs can be delivered in digital formats. Learning and developent can keep employees motivated and engaged with work. It can help them gain skills to better support their colleagues. This also holds true for employees on furlough. Even if they’re no longer working, they can stay connected to their workplace and can keep engaged with their professions through learning and development while gaining new skills.

Adapting to eLearning

Technology is already playing a key part in supporting businesses as they navigate through the global coronavirus crisis. From remote working to Zoom calls for meetings and socialising with work colleagues using the House Party app. For learning and development, it means adapting to eLearning to continue offering opportunities for training and development. eLearning offers a flexible and cost-effective alternative to traditional training and development programs. With the advent of learning experience platforms (LXP), modern eLearning is designed to be easily accessible, so employees can access their training remotely on whichever device that is most convenient or comfortable for them.

Despite the adversities facing us currently, it is important to continue to learn and develop our skills while in lockdown. With advances in technology and the use of eLearning, training and development opportunities are more accessible than ever. While the lockdown may have put a temporary lull on business plans and targets, the skills and knowledge gained during this time will continue to hold value once past the pandemic and holds the potential to refuel business growth in the future.

Millennials, COVID-19 and Technology

Millennials, COVID-19 and Technology

The effects of the COVID-19 outbreak are unprecedented in living memory. Almost unique in peacetime, the changes to society, work and leisure are far-reaching, with major measures to prevent the spread of the virus in place in every country touched by it.

The crisis has shone a light on the central role of technology in our society. If our reliance on modern tech was something to be concerned about beforehand, it has become nothing short of vital now. Perhaps the Millennial generation – long mocked for their supposed obsession with technology over real-world interactions – are specially placed to adjust to these changes.

The Role of Technology

With many people confined to their homes for the foreseeable future, our internet connections have to stand in for many of the building blocks of normal life:

  • Work: Those who are able to work from home have been told to do so. This has created an army of remote workers, many of them working from home for extended periods for the first time in their careers.
  • Education: Since schools closed, many parents and family members are finding themselves in the role of temporary teachers. The internet provides endless content for activities to keep children happy, engaged and learning during the closure period, as well as providing a handy way for teachers to put work online for their students.
  • Social Lives: With gatherings forbidden, technology allows us to remember that “social distancing” only refers to physical distance. Keeping in contact with our friends and family remotely is more important than ever. When phone calls and social media posts just aren’t enough, video calls can give us that much-needed dose of human interaction.
  • Shopping: People have been advised to shop online for essentials where they’re able to. It’s not always possible – due to the greater demand, delivery slots are harder to come by – but where it can be done, it avoids unnecessary interaction with others and helps to stop the spread of the virus.

While for many people this is a revolution in how they live their lives, for many millennials, it is an intensifying of habits they already had.

Coming of age in the early 2000s, millennials were the first generation to fully embrace social media and go through the latter stages of school and university with broadband internet access close at hand. Keeping in touch with friends in far-flung places, ordering items online and doing work – or school work – at home is second nature to many. Though it is of course a generalisation, it may be the older generation who are feeling the most strain from the coronavirus lockdown.

Every generation expresses a preference for some flexibility in where they work from, but this has been particularly strong for millennials. For years before the crisis began, this age group were showing a strong desire to work from home where possible. It’s hard to predict what long-term effects the coronavirus lockdown will have on working practices, but with widespread home-working becoming the new (temporary) norm, it could be that more employers follow this line in the future, adapting their business demands to the needs of millennial workers.

Pulling Together

Now more than ever, society needs to pull together – and that needs effort from people in all age groups.

This period has been full of examples of the best social media has to offer the world. For example, within a few days of the shutdown there were hundreds of Mutual Aid groups on Facebook, where local people who were vulnerable, self-isolating or running low on essential supplies could ask for help. There have also been successful fundraising efforts to help those most at risk of the virus, such as the Robin Hood Fund in Nottingham.

Video calling technology has also been useful for connecting older people who cannot leave their homes or receive visitors to their families – proving that far from pushing people apart as opponents of such technology have suggested, it can actually bring people separated by circumstances closer together.

Helpful Resources

Here are some more helpful tips and resources to help you while remote working:

Remote Working awareness course

Try our Remote Working awareness course to stay safe and healthy away from the office.

Information Security awareness training

With the flexibility to work from home in the current climate, it’s a great time to refresh your knowledge of keeping business information secure and working safely online. Try our awareness training courses on key information security topics to working safely and securely away from the office.

Business Contingency Plan (BCP) for Infection Outbreaks

A blog post with helpful tips for businesses on drawing up a business contingency plan and ensuring business continuity.

Mental Health While Working Remotely

A blog post with helpful tips on how to care for your mental health while working from home for longer periods.

Four Tips For Keeping Safe Online When Remote Working

With the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus globally, a majority of businesses are following up on the official advice of social distancing, encouraging employees to work remotely and ensuring business continuity. While remote working has its benefits, it could also lead to potential cybersecurity risks for employers and employees.

Here are some helpful tips for ensuring cyber safety and information security when working remotely.

Work on Secure Network

The first and most important step to working remotely is making sure you are connected to the Internet, ready to connect with your workplace, communicate with colleagues and access business information online. Failing to work on a secure network can make you vulnerable to a cyber-attack, compromising your systems and business information in such a critical time.

Top Tip:

Make sure you are using a virtual private network (VPN) or a secure home network with strong end-to-end encryption, for example, Office 365 SSL session. Using an unsecured network such as public WiFi could inadvertently create an access point for hackers and cybercriminals to exploit and make your systems susceptible to cyberattacks.

Secure Your Personal Devices

With so many employees working remotely, many organisations have authorised the use of personal devices when working from home. Using your personal device for work is fine as long as you are keeping it secure and have the most up-to-date software and settings running on it.

Top Tip:

It is very important to make sure that you are running the most up-to-date anti-virus software on your device. Anti-virus software carries out regular scans of your computer and removes any malware detected. Make sure you are combining the anti-virus software with a robust firewall – software that monitors incoming and outgoing network traffic on your machine. This will ensure that you are significantly reducing the risks of cybercriminals successfully infiltrating your machine.

Beware of Phishing Attacks

Beware of cybercriminals looking to exploit the current situation on the coronavirus pandemic. Phishing attacks are designed to gain unauthorised access to confidential information through email.

Security experts are reporting a substantial rise in phishing email scams related to the coronavirus – the worst they have seen in years. The BBC has followed up on reports of individuals and businesses being targeted with phishing emails. The campaigns include tax refunds from the HMRC, email attachments from the World Health Organisation (WHO), bitcoin donations to help fight the coronavirus and scare tactics aimed at giving up work or personal email details.

Top Tips:

  • Never click on links in emails that you receive from people you don’t know.
  • If you’re not expecting an email, always examine the content of the email thoroughly and look out for grammar or spelling of the email – these are the tell-tale signs of a phishing scam.
  • If the email is claiming to be from public bodies such as the HMRC or the WHO, don’t open these emails as these are well-known phishing scams circulating currently.
  • If in doubt, always forward the email to your IT team first and get help in verifying if the email is legitimate.

Keep Business Information Secure

Any business information you access from home will be protected by secure login and password. Be it your work email, online business applications and communications tools. Weak credentials are easily exploited by cybercriminals and setting secure passwords is your first line of defence against hackers trying to gain unauthorised access to businesses’ systems.

Top Tip:

Use strong and unique passwords each time and make sure they are a combination of letters, numbers and characters. Apart from setting up secure passwords, try using multi-factor authentication for your organisation’s systems. Multi-factor authentications work by verifying user identity by multiple credentials, normally a password and a code sent to the user’s phone by text or an additional security question.

Effective information security is key to optimising business information while remote working. Keeping information security risks under control will not only protect your own interests, but also those of your organisation, your customers and all other individuals or organisations that you hold information about.

Helpful Resources

Here are some more helpful tips and resources to help you while remote working:

Remote Working awareness course

Try our Remote Working awareness course to stay safe and healthy away from the office.

Information Security awareness training

With the flexibility to work from home in the current climate, it’s a great time to refresh your knowledge of keeping business information secure and working safely online. Try our awareness training courses on key information security topics to working safely and securely away from the office.

Business Contingency Plan (BCP) for Infection Outbreaks

A blog post with helpful tips for businesses on drawing up a business contingency plan and ensuring business continuity.

Mental Health While Working Remotely

A blog post with helpful tips on how to care for your mental health while working from home for longer periods.