How to Stay Connected When You’re Far Apart

Jonathan Lui and Nigel Choji understand the benefits, flexibility and opportunities afforded by new technology. Jonathan headed up Rackspace’s modern workplace business unit, and Nigel has years of experience in helping customers adopt new cloud tech. Both now find such skills vital to support colleagues and customers as they navigate the challenges we’re all facing during the coronavirus lockdown.

“A lot of businesses have been forced into a work-from-home culture — and they weren’t prepared for it,” says Nigel. He believes business continuity and staff interactions may be hampered by a lack of access to relevant hardware, robust networking and appropriate security. But there’s also a human aspect, as Jonathan explains: “People build trust when they see each other face-to-face in the same room.” When all interactions are now at a distance, he asks how we can keep important conversations going — and whether companies are placing value on the right conversations in the first place.

These themes are at the heart of the latest CloudSpotting episode. Jonathan and Nigel join hosts and solution architects Alex Galbraith and Sai Iyer. Over half an hour, this fab four draws on their experience and equips listeners to be productive and communicative while ensuring that everyone — staff and customers alike — can navigate this situation without feeling adrift.

Listen to the full episode to find out more, including:

• How video calls can replace face-to-face meetings and promote trust
• Ways to ensure team members – new and old — don’t feel isolated and alone
• Methods to keep open lines of communication with customers
• The importance of fail-safes and fallbacks for connectivity and devices
• How the right kind of distractions can be a boon to the workplace
• Keeping physically and mentally healthy with regular breaks, chats and exercise

“We’ve got to find ways through processes and technologies to keep everyone together, otherwise it’s going to be a lot more difficult to keep going,” says Nigel. “We must figure out how to establish conversations and maximize the tools at our disposal.”

In doing so, Nigel believes we may even transform the current circumstances into an opportunity. This would find businesses permanently taking advantage of new technologies and cultural shifts to better equip themselves for a future where they are more modern, agile and flexible, and able to better support staff and customers alike — whatever the circumstances.

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