Businesses worried about productivity levels as more employees work from home should consider their data processes – to ensure everyone has access to the most up-to-date information.

Whilst some business owners fear that workers staying in their pyjamas and watching Netflix may be the biggest dent in productivity when it comes to home working, the reality could be that outdated data is what should concern them.

Remote working sees employees scrutinise and amend business critical data from home – so the priority should be on ensuring these changes propagate through the network quickly and efficiently. This way, all other employees – as well as shareholders, suppliers and more – can be sure the information they are seeing is accurate and up-to-date.

Writing for 2BrightSparks, Swapna Naraharisetty explained that, whilst there are many ways to update data across a network, fully automated, cloud-based backup services were by far the most efficient.

She explained: “All your data on the remote laptops/devices will be migrated automatically to a cloud server like Amazon S3, Backblaze, Microsoft Azure or Google storage. And from the cloud server the data will be synced automatically to the organization data centres. This way the data will not be lost, and file servers will be updated automatically when a file is changed by a remote employee.”

Backups such as these aren’t just beneficial for productivity, however, but can protect against cyber crime too. Naraharisetty added that, in addition to the working backup, additional measures should also be put in place, so disasters or intrusions can be managed effectively – with as little interruption as possible to overall productivity.

Where the physical backups are concerned, a 3-2-1 approach is among the most reliable. This sees three backups created, at two separate locations within your business or data centre, plus another one offsite, just as extra cover.

This approach, Naraharisetty concluded, won’t just ensure businesses remain productive during the current climate, but also ensure they stay protected in future, whilst also better preparing them for any future lockdowns or other disruptions that may come in future.