When COVID-19 shut down work as we know it in the early part of 2020, the prudent step to take was to send our teams home to work, warm up the VPN and hope for the best.

For some organizations this was no sweat as they were either entirely virtual or already had a fair amount of remote workers.

For many organizations, it was a bit of chaos. 

Even if your organization was prepared (got lucky) to have a solid remote access mechanism, it was probably not adequately equipped for everyone to WFH all-at-once. (I don't realy need to explain that WFH means Work From Home any more, do I?)

It was chaos.

BUT THERE WAS ADRENALINE (ok, sorry for the caps).

Scary. New. Unknown. Different. But scary.

We were engaged, we were agile, we were living through some history, not just reading about it. 

We learned about what it means to be an essential worker -- some people I know had both a reason why they were essential and a reason why they wouldn't leave the house.

As the days became weeks became months, things changed.

Zoom became not only a household word but also (a little) more secure.

The developers of Microsoft Teams demonstrated what some real focus can do to a feature set as they closed the gap with Zoom.

Eventually, you could buy toilet paper again.

Warehouse and delivery personnel started to get noticed as "essential too". (Thank you!)

And wearing a mask with your logo softened the experience, even if just a little.

But. Work. Began. To. Slip.

Bills that you thought you paid didn't actually get paid because the people who ordinarily manage that stuff were at home. That leaves other people to do it. And I am terrible at that sort of thing, by the way.

What used to be a quick conversation became a non-returned message exchange with a co-worker and a "I'll have to call you back when I get the answer" to the customer.

Enter also the software to make it look like you were working but weren't really at your desk. Yes, it exists. And yes, it is abused. And yes, probably some of your employees were not always working. Shocking, right?

Like Noah in the Ark, we began to wonder just when we can get out of our cage and get back to the office.

Cue the next round of drama

Time to go back to the office, but we have to:

Determine where to sit in the office.

Figure out who is supposed to be in the office this week.

Figure out if you are going to take a meeting from home or the office.

Have to actually wear pants to go with that collared shirt.

And my personal favorite, remember just how awful it is to wear dress socks again.

Oh, and that pesky question of determining if I need to bring my VOIP phone back to the office for my rotation.

And, the pundits say we're going to have another wave of chaos, and they don't just mean the election season.

Now, more than ever it is time to solve the hybrid and flexible working model

Those of us in the industry call it UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service).

You call it dial tone.

And, yes, the phone is still a staple of the workplace. Not as important as it once was, but we still need to get it right.

It's time to make sure your business phone just works no matter where you are.

You've got questions, navitend can help you figure out how to get the phones right for your team.  Visit us on the web or call us today 973.448.0070 press '2' for more info.