The Thurston, Pierce, Lewis, and Mason Counties IT Experts

We don’t have to treat this question as a hypothetical, either. We have actual examples to consider, in terms of how employees have responded to such news.

Mandatory RTO Hasn’t Been Taken Well in the Recent Past

There have been a number of companies that, having successfully implemented remote work when it was deemed necessary for safe operations, elected to roll back these capabilities.

• In May 2021, Jamie Dimon—CEO of JPMorgan—claimed that remote work “doesn’t work for people who want to hustle,” and that it also “doesn’t work for culture, doesn’t work for idea generation.” However, by April of this year, Dimon had conceded that only half of his entire workforce will return to the office full-time, with 10% remaining as full-time remote employees.
  
  
• In April, Apple mandated that all employees needed to be in the office at least three days each week. The employees responded by forming a group (“Apple Together”) and publishing an open letter criticizing the executives’ decision.
  
  
• In March, David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, insisted that the company’s employees make the shift back to the office full-time. Only half of the company’s employees did so.
  
  
• Recently, Google Maps and the tech company Cognizant were convinced by their employees’ petition against a return to their Bothell, Washington offices, pushing their RTO date from June 6th to September 6th.
  
  
• Finally—and perhaps most noticeably—Elon Musk has vocally come out against Tesla employees working from home, after emails leaked from Musk that stated, “Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla.” He then doubled down on his statements by saying people who thought coming into work is an antiquated concept should “pretend to work somewhere else.”

Ouch. However, this all shows another form of resistance—not just the resistance that these employers still have against remote work, but the resistance that employees have against these return to office mandates. Many companies have taken note of this and have taken the opposite tack as the above, instead offering perks and special events for those willing to come back.

Naturally, larger companies are able to do significant things to draw in their team members. Microsoft treated its employees in Redmond to a variety of perks—concerts by local bands, terrarium-making classes, and beer and wine tastings. Qualcomm (who makes the chips that may very well power the device you’re reading this on now) welcomed their employees back with a happy hour, and began numerous events and pop-up activities for team members.

Of course, such activities are almost assuredly out of reach for small businesses.

Therefore, It’s Important that You Remain Flexible, If Only to Avoid Pushback

With unprecedented acceptance of remote work in the job market right now, you need to give your employees the level of workplace flexibility they want. The technologies that enable hybrid operations will be fundamental to doing so, which is something that we can help you implement. Reach out to us today to find out what we can offer to support your business, whether your operations are in-house, remote, or hybrid. Give us a call at 360-491-2227.

How to Remove Duplicate Values in Columns

It turns out that Microsoft Excel makes this process extraordinarily easy to pull off. There is an option built right into the program which enables you to do this. Begin by opening up whichever spreadsheet you want to remove duplicate values in.

Next, select the cells which comprise the spreadsheet. If you want to do the whole spreadsheet, you can use Ctrl + A to select the entire thing.

The next step is to go to the Data tab and select the Data Tools button in the ribbon. From here, you select Remove Duplicates from the drop-down menu. A menu should open up with some options to choose from. If you want to keep your headers, if your spreadsheet uses them, then select the box for My data has headers. This will ignore the first row of your spreadsheet.

Underneath this option, you should see the list of columns in your spreadsheet. Select the columns for which you want to delete duplicate values. To make things easier, you can use the Select All or Unselect All options at the top of the box. Once you are ready, you can click OK. A dialog box will appear telling you how many duplicate values have been deleted, as well as how many unique values remain.

And that’s it! Super easy, right?

What are some other tips you would like to see from us in the future? Be sure to let us know in the comments, and for more great tips and tricks, subscribe to PC Technologies’s blog.

Control Internal Access

For a long time, every person on a business’ computing network had access to every file and application hosted on it. Over time, this caused a lot of problems with data security. There is absolutely no reason why every employee needs access to every file on your network. In fact, it can only end poorly. Partitioning certain parts of your network and implementing access controls to get the tools (and access to files) to the employees that need them, while also minimizing your risk by limiting access to some is a best practice that all organizations should employ. 

Control Vendor Access

Every single business has a myriad of third-party vendors that they use. While you may know your sales representatives well, you don’t know everyone that works with them. This presents significant potential risk. Nowadays, with data privacy laws beginning to pop up regularly, businesses that don’t have some semblance of access control for their vendors could stand to face civil or even criminal legal action, let alone compliance fines and reputational harm. If your vendors demand access to your network, you have the right to demand transparency in return. If they cannot (or won’t) offer that, you need to rethink your business agreement.

Train Your People

One of the most important parts of having a strong cybersecurity posture is implementing a comprehensive cybersecurity training regimen for your employees. This includes how to properly create passwords that protect their employee accounts, how to spot potential phishing messages, and why they need to be active participants in protecting your business’ network and data. Nowadays, a majority of outside threats are aimed at getting employees to grant access to accounts so that cybercriminals can plant malware, siphon data, and even steal money. The better prepared your employees are for this eventuality, the more secure your business’ network and data will be. 

Patch Your Software

Another major avenue of attack is through vulnerabilities created by software that hasn’t been updated properly or timely patched. Most software your business relies on is constantly developed by the company you get it from and if you don’t consistently make an effort to keep every server, workstation, or networking device updated, new vulnerabilities will form. This can be a real problem for your business. 

Develop a Security Plan

Finally, not every threat is going to be caught by security software and not every vulnerability is going to be consistently caught by infrequent penetration testing. You need to have a dedicated cybersecurity response process in place that will direct your organization in the right direction should there be a network breach. It takes an average of three-quarters of a year for most network breaches to be detected. By then, it is difficult to mitigate the damage done. A business’ reputational damage is significant if a data breach happens, and if you don’t have a plan of attack to get out in front of it by evaluating what happened, what was taken, and resolve it quickly, things will certainly get worse. 

At PC Technologies, we work with Thurston, Pierce, Lewis, and Mason Counties businesses to help them secure their network and data, come up with policies, procedures, and training platforms to help mitigate the chances of a data breach, and manage the lingering negative effects that a lack of network security can have on your business. To have a conversation about how we can improve your business’ security posture, call us today at 360-491-2227.