Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) who are considering moving to fully remote or hybrid remote work scenarios must ensure that their technology infrastructure can support this move. In the tight labor market, a frustrating remote work experience caused by technology issues may cause you to lose a valuable employee. Below are several technology issues to consider and address before implementing remote work.
Hardware
Hardware is an obvious consideration when considering remote work. Companies must ensure that their employees have laptops. And if they already have laptops, it is essential to make sure that they are new enough and fast enough to provide the computing power necessary to easily access their data and programs no matter where they are working.
Reliable internet connectivity
Remote workers cannot be productive without reliable internet service, so your remote work strategy must include internet connectivity. There are several points to consider. The first is determine the bandwidth requirements for the services that your employees will connect to and use remotely. The next question is whether your company will require remote workers to implement minimum internet speeds because of the bandwidth requirements of remote access. Companies must also decide whether they will subsidize remote employees’ internet costs and if so, how.
Bandwidth caps
When COVID first hit and businesses went fully remote, many employees were surprised to learn that their ISPs had speed limits or caps in terms of bandwidth issues. When your employees work from home, their bandwidth usage will increase, and they may get slower service from their provider, which affects productivity, or they might receive overage fees. Planning for these issues in advance through requirements can help avoid these surprises and keep employees productive.
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Connectivity to data and applications
In order for their remote workers to be productive, SMBs must ensure that their line of business applications are accessible from anywhere and perform at the same speed remotely. For companies whose applications are already in the cloud, the home office is just like another remote site and providing access to applications and data is fairly simple. However, for businesses who still provide access to their applications through desktop computers at the office, providing remote workers with access to these tools is more complicated. Desktop licenses will need to be swapped for cloud-enabled licenses. For your applications with no cloud version, you will need to decide whether to migrate to a cloud-enabled tool or create a work-around.
Other considerations include whether applications are accessible via VPN and the speed and bandwidth they require to ensure they can be used productively. And then more broadly, you must make decisions about the VPN itself—speed, ease of connection, and whether to choose an always-on VPN.
Printing
Some remote workers or industries have heavy printing needs. Companies moving to remote work should decide whether to purchase printers for these workers, require them to print in the office, or to reimburse them for purchases including printers, paper, and printer ink. If you decide on reimbursement, you will need to ensure you are reimbursing only your employees’ printing needs, not those of their spouses, roommates, or kids.
Support
In many small and medium-sized businesses, support personnel can walk to an employee’s desk and address whatever issue they are having. But if you implement a remote work environment, support becomes more complicated. One option is to implement a system in which support personnel can connect to employee desktops remotely to fix problems. Regardless of how you address support, it is critical to plan and budget for a support burden that will inevitably increase. Your support organization will now be responsible for not one or two office networks, but as many networks as there are remote workers, increasing its work considerably. How will remote workers will contact support for slow bandwidth when the real problem is that their child is playing on the Xbox or watching Netflix all day?
Training
You can reduce some of the support burden mentioned above by providing adequate training to your employees. It is important to remember that there are varying degrees of comfort and experience with remote access among your employees, so training needs will vary. Whether you stay with your current remote work setup or design a new one, you will need to train your employees. In addition, when company or department-wide trainings take place, organizations must consider how to include remote workers. It is imperative to plan and budget for the significant training that remote work will require.
Remote conferencing
Most organizations who went remote during COVID have figured out a way to provide remote conferencing to their employees. Conferencing is an example of how creating a remote work strategy gives your business a chance to improve on the band-aid approach you put in place when COVID struck. Therefore, the first consideration for those organizations creating a permanent remote work strategy is whether your current conferencing tool is the right one. Ensuring the tool is secure is the most crucial step. And from a productivity lens, it is also helpful to utilize a conferencing technology that is integrated with other productivity tools, just as Microsoft Teams is integrated with Microsoft 365.
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At Logic Speak, our core values shape how we lead, how we work, and how we serve our clients. They’re not words on a wall, they’re filters for decisions and expectations for how we show up every day.
But here’s something we’ve learned the hard way: even good values have a shadow side.
Values, when taken too far or applied without self‑awareness, can create unintended consequences. What starts as a strength can quietly become a blind spot. And if we’re not careful, the very things we pride ourselves on can work against us.
So today, we want to talk honestly about our values, not just the best of them, but the risks of overusing them.
We Care for You
The strength:
Caring for others is foundational to who we are. It means treating people with dignity, empathy, and kindness. It means remembering that coworkers, clients, and partners are humans first, not just roles or tickets or invoices.
The shadow side:
When care goes unchecked, it can turn into avoidance. We may hesitate to give hard feedback because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. We may tolerate behaviors longer than we should because we empathize deeply with circumstances. Over time, clarity suffers, and ironically, so does trust.
Care without courage isn’t actually care.
We Lean In
The strength:
We lean in when there’s a need. We take ownership. We step up when things are unclear or uncomfortable. This value fuels responsibility, initiative, and teamwork.
The shadow side:
Leaning in too much can become overfunctioning. We jump in to fix things that aren’t ours to fix. We take on too much instead of letting others wrestle and grow. Eventually, this can lead to burnout, resentment, or invisible bottlenecks where “that person always handles it.”
Sometimes the most responsible thing to do is not lean in, but step back.
We Love Our Craft
The strength:
We take pride in doing things well. We pay attention to details. We care about quality, process, and doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.
The shadow side:
At its extreme, loving our craft can turn into perfectionism. We may over‑engineer solutions, delay decisions, or become critical when others don’t meet our internal standards. What was meant to produce excellence can unintentionally slow momentum or make collaboration harder.
Excellence should serve the outcome, not replace it.
We Keep Improving
The strength:
Growth matters here. We believe learning never stops and that feedback, when handled well, is a gift. This value keeps us curious, hungry, and moving forward.
The shadow side:
Constant improvement can quietly create the feeling that “where we are is never enough.” Wins may go uncelebrated because we’re already focused on what’s next. People may feel like they’re always being evaluated instead of occasionally being affirmed.
Improvement without appreciation can feel exhausting.
Why This Matters: Blind Spots Are Part of Being Human
None of these shadow sides mean our values are flawed. They mean we’re human.
Every person, every team, and every organization has blind spots. Often, they’re not found in our weaknesses, but in our strengths, overused or unexamined. The danger isn’t having blind spots, it’s assuming we don’t.
That’s why self‑awareness matters so deeply to us. It’s why feedback matters. It’s why we believe asking questions like “How is this landing?” and “What might I be missing?” is a leadership responsibility, not a sign of insecurity.
Living Our Values With Humility
Our goal isn’t to live our values perfectly. It’s to live them thoughtfully.
That means holding our values firmly, but ourselves humbly. It means inviting perspective, welcoming challenge, and remembering that good intentions don’t eliminate unintended impact.
When we name the shadow side, we don’t weaken our culture, we strengthen it.
Because the best teams aren’t made of people without blind spots.
They’re made of people willing to look for them.
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