With the start of working from home, what kind of changes do employers start to make in their work and have the demands differed in this process?

In the process of working from home, employers start to take very intense actions to carry all the work they do on paper to online. Basically, the changes we see can be grouped under the main titles of managing the work on employees, digitizing meetings with customers and internal companies, making documents accessible from anywhere, and ensuring secure access to company resources such as accounting systems and human resources applications from external locations. Of course, the first action to be taken among these topics, and perhaps the most important one, is the common working platforms that will ensure the uninterrupted and continuous communication of the employees with each other.

How has the demand for digital workplace platforms increased during this period?

Working on digital platforms in workplaces that have switched to remote working has led to an increase in demand. Especially on platforms such as MS Teams, many companies have started to read our blog posts and get information from us about how to use them more effectively. Among all the services we provide, the demand for digital workplace platforms has increased by 70%. We foresee that these demands will intensify even more in the coming days. Because companies quickly return to work from home, they pay particular attention to fast applicability and security criteria when choosing digital environments that will ensure the continuity of their business. While there are hundreds of different applications that can provide these environments, especially products like Velocity and Teams come to the that can be started to use in minutes and provide convenience in terms of management of IT teams.

What are the benefits of digital platforms when working from home? What kind of difficulties does it eliminate?

With the process we are going through, the concept of “Digital Workplace” has once again reminded us of its importance. When companies start to act with technology by reshaping the way they work and even the areas in their offices through cloud-based systems, they get to work more efficiently, securely, and quickly. It is also useful to use intranet portals so that the communication within the company is coordinated and the employees can follow the work easily. Because you can access files, data or customers from your mobile devices 24/7.

Being able to work from home on digital platforms also allows you to act regardless of time and place. For example, people in different locations can work simultaneously and share their comments over a document shared via Teams. In this way, you get eliminate the information and document crowd. You can always stay up to date on a single file.

As companies start to use digital platforms, they become more aware of the time spent in traffic, focused- work and other distractions, especially in busy cities. In fact, in their daily routines, they see that they can complete the tasks in a shorter period of time. In other words, this makes the society more efficient.

What are the pros and cons of digital workplaces for both employers and employees while working from home?

Currently, working from home has shown us that we can advance our business processes through digital platforms without disrupting them. We are more luck about this because we could already work on Teams and Velocity. Being able to run our business processes digitally enables us to use our time more efficiently and productively. We have always taken our precautions against possible cyber threats. The reduced time we spend in traffic enables us to do our jobs more efficiently. Of course, as with all positive things, there are also negative aspects. The most important of these is the time employees spend together, the emergence of innovative ideas and its effects on company loyalty, are among the most important factors that should be paid attention to in digital channels while working remotely. When we look at it from the human resources perspective, employee loyalty affects the motivation to work in a pluralistic society like ours.

Could you give examples of big companies that have purchased and use Velocity?

We can count among the valuable companies of the sector that actively use Velocity such as Atasay, Ege Kimya and Mitaş. Applications such as Velocity have a very important place in ensuring business continuity especially in workplaces with many settlements and where employees do not work in the same place.

With the virus pandemic, which sectors have demanded more for digital workplace platforms?

After the virus pandemic, demands are very intense from all sectors, especially in sectors such as retail, manufacturing, and logistics. The common reason these sectors are in such high demand seems to be the need to coordinate a large number of employees at the same time. As the virus pandemic leads everyone to work from their home, it is a very important responsibility to ensure that everyone works as if they were in the office for the continuity of the economy. The realization of such a project that affects everyone as the scale of the company grows is both a critical and challenging process. The remote working environment, which would normally take weeks or months, becoming an obligation in a very short time; pushes the human resources and information technologies departments to choose solutions that are integrated with their existing systems, that can be easily applied and that the employees will adapt to easily.

Were any new features added to Velocity because of the pandemic?

We do our best to keep our teammates up to date. Especially with the start of the virus pandemic, there is information pollution and panic in social media. In order to prevent this, we often share the progress of the process and anti-virus methods. In addition, we prepared a Power BI report where we can see the distribution of the virus according to countries and created an information area where we can follow the process up to date. Our necessary information and announcements can be followed up to date on Velocity in this area. In order to draw attention to the importance of awareness for protection against the virus, a special application card has been developed so that our customers who use the Velocity intranet platform can share with their employees centrally. Through this module, information about the measures taken against the pandemic, application procedures and changing working conditions can be provided.

Can the digital workplace control employees’ working hours and performance?

Yes we can. We are in constant communication through Teams. We can have our daily meetings, which we used to always have t 8:00, on Teams right now. We start working at 8:00 every morning, we continue our team meetings, and our business processes are the same as when we worked in the office. We can have our activities that we do not want to cancel through digital platforms. Although it is not possible to record the meetings physically under normal conditions, we can even say that the fact that the meeting records, the notes and the task distributions can be done automatically has a positive effect since we carry them out through digital applications. On the other hand, let’s not look at this process as just controlling their working hours and performance, we have many friends who are alone at home right now and will have to be alone for a while. When they want to talk or have some fun, we pay attention to the importance of keeping our energy high and motivating each other by making video calls via Teams.

Can the features of the digital workplace platform be used differently because to the pandemic?

While digital workplace platforms are applications that should be owned by many companies but are seen as supportive of physical business areas, we can say that with the working from home rate increasing due to the pandemic, it has replaced the workplace. While digital platforms are now the primary working environment for companies, offices have only been the physical areas that support this. Our customers work to meet both the communication and the operation they carry out in their daily routines on digital platforms. For example, there are many documents and information that human resources departments need to share in processes such as new procedures applied in workplaces and changing business conditions due to Corona, and they create special information areas for them by using flexible application cards to meet these needs.

Is there a feature for the workers not to get bored or to communicate with their colleagues?

Of course, both Velocity and Teams are platforms that we also use for socializing. For example, in Velocity, you can follow your horoscope on a weekly basis and share photos of events, concerts and picnics. In addition, we can share and chat about our music, movie, book suggestions with each other in many different groups we have created within Teams, we can discuss current news and communicate in many different areas. We prefer chatting within Teams rather than spending time on our social media.

What are the digital dangers we may face while working from home?

Digital danger is always a threat not only when working at home, but also in your office. We discuss this subject under two main titles, the first and perhaps the most important of these are the threats that may come from users, these are caused by the leak attempts of user information through social engineering or deceptive e-mail content. Our second topic is threats to company resources such as accounting data and documents. In order to prevent the threats caused by the employees’ accounts being hacked, the factors that should be considered are quite simple. Determining complex passwords in accordance with international criteria and ensuring that they are changed at certain intervals reduce these threats radically. For example, PassGate ensures that employees’ passwords comply with predefined criteria, and also provides employees with the opportunity of SMS-based self-service management by avoiding situations where high demands may arise from IT departments, especially while working remotely.

While you only tried to protect company networks previously, it is now a matter of protecting individuals who work with different devices in different locations. This situation requires the rapid transformation of classical information technology infrastructures. If you need to describe it correctly, your accounting department has to log into the accounting application from the seat of the company and process a lot of sensitive data, while now it is necessary to perform the same operations from their home as if they were in the office. It is critical that information technology departments can intervene when necessary to ensure that these accesses are secure. Remote access that is not configured properly can result in theft of all your company data.

What are your suggestions for both employers and employees against these dangers?

It is vital for companies to protect employees and company resources without interfering with business continuity. We see that all policies applied for employees should be in a way that ensures rapid adaptation, and when very strict practices are tried from time to time to be safe, this process backfires and takes companies a few steps back. For the safety of employees, it should be ensured that the password information through which the systems are accessed is as complex as possible and that the identity verification layers of the systems inside are singularized as much as possible, and the management effort and the measures taken should be collected at a single point. Transition to cloud technologies is very important for the security of access to company resources. Cyber-attacks can occur anywhere in the world, just like the Corona pandemic, and in such cases, it is necessary to choose security methods that make behavioral analysis powered by artificial intelligence. Many of our customers we serve had already completed most of their preparations for remote work and cyber security reflections, it was one of our main responsibilities to raise awareness of the measures we have mentioned and to ensure that they plan in this direction.

Can the connection of workers to social media be controlled on digital workplace platforms?

It is possible to report browsing times on social media and all other content pages entered from devices, and the usage statistics of company applications. There are many applications developed for this, but instead of such instantaneous measurement tools that create insecurity in employees, the main focus of digital platforms should be to follow up work and ensure effective communication.

What makes Velocity different from the other intranet platforms?

When starting to work on online systems, it can be very difficult to ensure information integrity among employees. Being able to manage your business processes on a platform where communication is not interrupted enables you to increase the productivity of your employees faster and to the highest level under all conditions. You can create your portal content with many alternatives you can choose from the widget catalog. It is a savior especially for Human Resources departments. You can carry out announcements, information, permissions, expenses, advances, Law of Protection of Personal Data processes through a single portal. The flexibility to adapt to the extreme situations we are experiencing right now is very critical. For example, with Velocity, it is possible to centrally share the precautions taken regarding the Corona pandemic and the points to be considered with employees on a single application card.

Many companies cannot get efficiency from intranet platforms. Because most of their progress depends on the IT departments or the product they use. Due to these situations, internal communication processes cannot remain continuous, up-to-date and efficient. As a solution to these problems, Velocity is an in-house communication platform that receives its updates, is constantly active and easy to use, and you can use it without the need for IT departments.

You can have Velocity with no initial budget, monthly and annual payment options, and fast setup regardless of the number of users.