Policy - Resources for Businesses & Employers
Resources for Businesses & Employers
Tools to Facilitate Online and Remote Work
— Adobe
— Amazon
— Cisco
— Dropbox
— Google
— IBM
— McAfee
— Microsoft
— Palo Alto Networks
— Salesforce
— SAP
— ServiceNow
— Tenable
— VMware
Tips and Guidance for Remote Work
— Accenture
— Apple
— Autodesk
— Cisco
— Dell
— LinkedIn
— Palo Alto Networks
— Salesforce
— SAP
— Twilio
Additional Resources
— Accenture
— Amazon
— eBay
— Intuit
— Palo Alto Networks
— Salesforce
— SAP
Tools to Facilitate Online and Remote Work
Adobe
Adobe Document Cloud helps keep business moving even when you’re working from home, allowing users to collaborate on documents or get signatures even when you’re apart. It gives individual, SMB, and enterprise customers the tools to transform manual paper-based document processes into efficient digital ones, enabling people to work from anywhere. At the heart of Document Cloud is PDF solution Acrobat DC; Adobe Sign, an e-signature solution that allows anyone to sign and send documents from anywhere; and free companion mobile apps, like Acrobat Reader and Adobe Scan.
Further, Adobe Document Cloud has free apps and tools to help businesses and workers stay connected while working remotely. Free Adobe Acrobat Reader DC - makes it easy to view, print, and comment on, and share PDFs from anywhere. The free Adobe Scan mobile app makes it easy to capture and convert documents, forms, and business cards and turn them into high quality PDFs with automatic text recognition. Free Adobe Fill & Sign lets anyone complete, sign, and send forms electronically from their desktop, browser, or mobile app.
Adobe Acrobat DC lets workers create, edit, share, and collaborate on PDF documents easily from home. Because Acrobat DC licenses are tied to individuals, rather than desktop computers, workers can easily download a copy of Acrobat to their personal computer or mobile device – or access it through a web browser - then login and work efficiently from their own homes. Acrobat DC also makes remote collaboration a breeze with easy-to-use tools for sharing, viewing, reviewing, and signing PDFs electronically. Anyone can comment or sign electronically (even if they don’t have an Acrobat license), and workers can send reminders, set deadlines, and track progress in real time.
Adobe Sign makes signatures easy, wherever you work. Employees simply login to a web browser, Microsoft Office 365, or other enterprise system to request signatures from others and track progress in real time. Signers click on a link to view and sign electronically from their computer or mobile device. When the job is done, everyone gets a copy of the signed agreement and an audit report is generated automatically. Adobe has extended its free trial for commercial users of Sign. Learn more here.
To better enable virtual business environments for remote workforce, and as enterprises reorient their business operations, Adobe Connect can meet business needs with its interactive, scalable and secure virtual environments for businesses. In response to international public health advisories, Adobe is providing free 90-day access to Adobe Connect to help government agencies and businesses enable virtual environments for real-time collaboration and online training. Learn more here.
If you are new to Adobe products, Adobe Experience League offers complementary skill-based learning for Adobe enterprise customers on Adobe Sign and Adobe Acrobat DC showcasing tools and workflows to digitally transform business processes. Adobe also offers the following webinars:
- Adobe Acrobat
- “5 Tips to Work from Anywhere with Acrobat DC,”
- “Adobe Document Cloud Skill Builder”
- “Get Work Done with Acrobat DC”
- Adobe Sign:
- “Adobe Sign: Use Case Showcase”
- “Adobe Sign Innovation Series”
- Document Cloud & PDF Services for IT: Livestream event: “IT Roundtable: Tips for Enabling Remote Work
Register for the webinar series on the Adobe Experience League page.
Amazon
For employers looking for ways to communicate with employees – and employees looking to communicate with each other, Amazon WorkSpaces offers a managed, secure cloud desktop service. A customer can use Amazon WorkSpaces to provision either Windows or Linux desktops in just a few minutes and quickly scale to provide this service to thousands of workers across the globe. Users can access it anywhere, anytime, from any supported device. In addition, Amazon Chime is a high-quality communications service that facilitates online meetings with an easy-to-use app which works seamlessly across all users’ devices. Users can schedule and attend online meetings and video conferences, and chat, call, and collaborate, inside and outside their organization, all with a single app.
Amazon currently has a credit program available for its remote workforce solutions, including Chime and Workspaces, referenced above.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is offering free AWS Digital Training. This includes on-demand digital courses that help you learn new cloud skills and services when and where it’s convenient for you. Additionally, AWS Training and Certification (T&C) extended its virtual Instructor-Led Training (vILT) offering to include public courses delivered by AWS.
Cisco
To support existing Cisco customers as they formulate business continuity plans and scale out their ability to support work from home during this crisis, Cisco has introduced several Webex offers and resources, including:
- Free Webex for Individuals and Small Business
- Free Webex Enterprise for 90 days for new customers
- Overage relief for existing customers
- Resources and online training
Learn more here.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a smart workspace and collaboration platform that integrates with the cloud/web-based tools workers need to do their jobs securely and effectively while practicing social distancing. Dropbox has published a series of resources on its blog to help people work in distributed teams, as well as Dropbox product tips to help users get the most out of its services while working remotely. Dropbox is updating and adding to these resources regularly.
Dropbox is offering free Dropbox Business subscriptions for a three-month period to nonprofits and NGOs that are focused on fighting COVID-19. Organizations working to stop the virus or providing relief to those impacted are encouraged to apply here.
Google Cloud wants to do its part to help people stay connected and productive in this uncertain time. To help businesses collaborate no matter where they’re located, Google Cloud is rolling out free access to its advanced video-conferencing capabilities to all existing G Suite customers globally. You can learn more about Google Cloud's work here.
In addition, Google’s Hangouts Meet will now have advanced features available for free to all G Suite customers and NGOs through July 1 and will be available for customers to turn on within the next two weeks. These advanced features include:
- Increased participant limit of 250 participants per Hangouts Meet,
- Ability to live stream a Hangouts Meet (up to 100,000 viewers within domain),
- Ability to record a Hangouts Meet.
- IBM Security to protect remote employees, protect themselves from cybersecurity criminals capitalizing on COVID-19 uncertainty, and address critical security needs.
- X-Force Threat Management (XFTM) for European-only delivery. The European-only XFTM solution allows to offer this solution to clients with requirements that go above and beyond those of GDPR for response & disclosure, provide EU-located personnel only service and maintain EU data residency. IBM can run the service on the IBM Cloud, via QRadar on Cloud.
- IBM Cloud is offering no-cost options to help our customers maintain business continuity while migrating to remote work environments, including IBM Cloud Virtual Server configurations.
- IBM Aspera is offering new clients free, 90-day access to its cloud service for high-speed file sharing and team collaboration.
- IBM Video Streaming and IBM Enterprise Video Streaming (Watson Media) solutions are offered for free, 90-day access to video streaming for new customers to stream events to public audiences up to 20,000 viewer hours or to stream to up to 20,000 authenticated users for one event per week during the specified period.
- IBM Sterling is offering free, 90-day access to solutions to help navigate the challenges stemming from supply chain disruptions, such as managing medical supplies, COVID-19 testing kits, and migrating retailers to BOPIS (Buy Online Pick-up In Store) strategy.
- IBM Blueworks Live is offering free, 90-day access to help clients facilitate remote collaboration with stakeholders and distribute new or changing processes to their workforce.
- IBM Cloud Event Management is offering free, 90-day access to help teams cut through event noise to prioritize, diagnose, assign and resolve incidents from a single service.
Microsoft
Microsoft’s Teams is the tool and resource offered to facilitate remote work. It is a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines workplace chat, audio conferencing, video meetings, file storage, and can help users - employees, students and volunteers - stay connected.
Teams is a part of Office 365. If your organization is licensed for Office 365, you already have it. But Microsoft wants to make sure everyone has access to it during this time.
Here are some simple ways to get Teams right away, including some free or premium options.
Need help using Teams? IT Guidance, End User Guidance and other support links, including quick start guides and training videos, can be found here.
Palo Alto Networks
As organizations rapidly scale remote work options for employees, they will need to ensure they can securely and rapidly connect to all of the applications they need, including SaaS, cloud, and data center apps. Palo Alto Networks has solutions ready to go to help organizations secure their remote workforce, including:
Prisma Access: A globally distributed cloud service that scales automatically to provide the needed capacity for remote workers. It offers the same security functionality as our next-generation firewalls, but without the need to deploy new infrastructure. As the situation changes globally, organizations can maintain business continuity as Prisma Access will auto-scale to wherever capacity is needed.
- If you would like Prisma Access, Palo Alto Networks is offering free, accelerated deployment and onboarding of remote users.
- For existing Prisma Access customers who need additional capacity, Palo Alto Networks has you covered for any unanticipated spikes for mobile users, at no additional cost for 90 days.
Learn more here.
Palo Alto Networks is also sharing additional resources and programs for business continuity here.
Salesforce
Salesforce is providing ongoing free access to Salesforce Essentials to help small businesses support their customers remotely and to Tableau to help them quickly make data-driven decisions.
Read more on Salesforce’s resource page for small businesses.
SAP
SAP offers a variety of tools for enterprises to enable a smooth and productive environment.
Remote Work Pulse. Remote Work Pulse is a free and automated feedback solution from experience management platform Qualtrics and gives employers insights needed to keep teams thriving amidst a major business disruption and ensure success in a new environment. Get Remote Work Pulse here.
On-Demand Training. In addition, SAP has free, on-demand training to help teams explore ways to cope with unexpected changes to their working environment. Enterprises can access free ready-to-watch video-based courses from the SAP Litmos Training Content library until the end of June 2020 to help teams, leaders, and employees work effectively, no matter where they are. Access the free training videos here.
ServiceNow
ServiceNow does business with about 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies and many governments at the state, federal and global level. It is offering customers a community portal where customers can interact with other customers to share ideas and best practices for how they are using the Now Platform and workflows to manage through the COVID-19 situation. ServiceNow has also launched an Idea Portal on the Now Platform where customers and employees can provide feedback and learn from each other.
ServiceNow’s business continuity plan covers the ability for its business functions to work remotely in a safe and secure manner so they can continue to serve its customers. All remote access happens using secure connections and multifactor authentication, and is in compliance with applicable regulations and corporate standards. Its teams use multiple software as a service (Saas) tools for collaborations and virtual meetings.
To help companies and government implement critical workflows for emergency response and crisis management as they manage through the COVID-19 crises, ServiceNow is making four free, open-sourced apps available. They will remain free throughout the virus crisis.
ServiceNow’s customer support team will support the four, free, open-sourced apps they are making available to help business and government manage through the COVID-19 virus.
The apps are:
- Emergency Response Operations - This app was created on the Now Platform by Washington State’s Department of Health to manage their own COVID-19 situation, and they are donating it for use by other organizations and public agencies. This app supports operational processes of emergency response and preparedness at the state and local government level. It helps optimize resources and staff in critical locations, and follows federal regulations required for emergency funding and reimbursement.
- Emergency Outreach – During a crisis, this workflow uses a mobile app to help companies connect with employees and assess the impact on their employees. Employers can reach out by email or push notification to provide information and safety measures and get a response to confirm if employees are safe, and where they are located.
- Emergency Self Report - This workflow helps an employee notify their employer that they are going into quarantine. A workflow helps the employee safely return to work.
- Emergency Exposure Management - When an employee has been diagnosed with an illness, this workflow helps the employer identify other people who might have been exposed based on the employee’s meetings and location. In addition, ServiceNow sells a number of other Business Continuity Management applications to its customers who use the Now Platform.
As enterprises adjust to working remotely, Tenable is providing customers with guidance and new resources to help secure their networks and workforce.
To help customers handle the security of the assets used by remote workers, Tenable is offering an extension on Tenable.io licenses for free, through April 30. For Tenable.sc and Nessus Professional customers, Tenable is offering a free Tenable.io license with unlimited agent scanning for 30 days. Tenable will help customers rapidly deploy agents across remote workers’ personal assets and manage these devices as part of your deployment. Contact your customer success manager to learn more and get started.
In addition, Tenable will also be providing free weekly virtual sessions with its principal engineers to its customers around the globe. These sessions will include tips on how to set up agent scanning on remote assets, deployment best practices and a 30-minute Q&A session with Tenable’s specialists to help address specific queries. Find more information here.
VMware
Isolating employees to reduce the risk of disease spread doesn’t mean the end of productivity, in fact, moving toward a remote-first strategy now, can leave your organization stronger than before. VMware offers tools to help create a productive and secure environment for employees to thrive from anywhere. Learn more here.
Further, with VMware’s Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub notifications, organizations can generate and serve actionable, real-time notifications across employees or to select employee groups. This cloud-hosted service sends notifications to users in both the Intelligent Hub portal, in a browser, and through the Intelligent Hub app on their mobile device.
The Workspace ONE Notification Builder allows IT administrators and business partners to create, preview, and monitor notifications sent to employees via Intelligent Hub. Notifications can include custom text, actions, and priorities that can be targeted to all employees or specific groups of devices and users. These notifications can also be marked urgent for situations in which information needs to spread quickly and are also supported at the OS level push notification service so you can alert users even if they aren’t actively using Intelligent Hub. This means even if employees do not have access to email, the Notification Builder allows for immediate and crucial information to be relayed to the right people at the right time.
Notifications used in combination with Mobile Flows eliminate the need for employees to open multiple apps and services to complete tasks or get information. By taking advantage of Mobile Flows, you can provide a single source of truth so employees can receive accurate communications in-the-moment and make decisions while on-the-go. The nature of unexpected events means that information can change quickly and often be complex. Mobile Flows allows you to pull in additional notification context with integrated third-party business applications. By using VMware’s pre-built connectors with popular apps including Salesforce, Concur, Coupa, and ServiceNow, employees can easily update travel or track the status of a ticket based on new information. Many of the application integrations can be deployed with a single click and custom integrations can be built. Learn more here.Tips and Guidance for Remote Work
In addition to the resources below, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) offers enterprises guidance on keeping your networks secure while teleworking, found here.
Accenture
The global coronavirus pandemic taking place is a serious threat to people across the planet. Business leaders must make rapid decisions and take immediate actions to sustain business operations to serve their customers, clients and communities, as well as protect and support their workers.
Accenture’s recent report outlines an immediate action plan that businesses can take to address current disruptions and strengthen the resiliency of their supply chains.
To minimize business disruption and protect employees resulting from COVID-19, organizations should take steps now to start creating an Elastic Digital Workplace. Accenture’s Elastic Digital Workplace solution enables a highly extendable workplace environment that allows you to quickly scale and dynamically adapt to changing business needs based on global and local conditions.
- Within 24 hours – Assess your current state:
Analyze your current technology capabilities and your ability to scale out internally, including your current communications plan and support structure. - Within 72 hours – Identify how you can leverage existing technologies more effectively
- Within 5 days – Develop a leadership and culture awareness and change plan:
Design a change management plan, including leadership communications that encourage employees to adopt key technologies that will facilitate connections to their team members and leaders in this new environment, including at internal meetings and large-scale external events. - Within 2 weeks – Rapidly modernize and scale your collaboration capabilities as well as your workforce engagement plans:
Identify how to expand your workplace to the periphery, including a focus on home networking, broader networking, security, upgrading other tools and capabilities and helping your people learn and embrace new ways of working with each other.
Accenture also recommends that leaders develop a comprehensive Elastic Digital Workplace implementation plan, focusing on 6 key dimensions: Culture and Awareness; Elastic Collaboration; Virtual Work Environment; Seamless Networking; Distributed Continuity; and Adaptive Security. Learn more here.
For more information, visit: Report: COVID-19: What to Do Now, What to Do Next
As employees adapt to changes in the workplace due to COVID-19, Accenture’s workforce research highlights what workers need from leaders in three basic areas: physical, mental and relational. Learn about the specific physical, mental and relationship needs workers have, based on Accenture’s data, and Accenture’s recommended checklist for immediate actions from the C-suite here.
For businesses in customer service, Accenture offers a guidance on the best ways to remain responsive in times of change.
Businesses and employers seeking information on how to address systems resilience can find more information in Accenture's report: Systems resilience in times of unprecedented disruption.
Additional Resources
- Continuity in Crisis: How to run effective business services during COVID-19
- COVID-19: 5 new human truths that experiences need to address
- Channel shift: Prioritizing digital commerce
Apple
Apple has curated a list of apps to help those working from home more easily connect with coworkers and get work done.
Autodesk’s Remote Work Resource Center contains resources for customers to help access and use their Autodesk products and data, collaborate with teams, and remain productive while working remotely. The collection offers product guidance, online events, and tips for business continuity.
Cisco
Cisco is offering online resources to share best practices for working remotely. All available here.
Dell
Dell has made its internal work from home policy publicly available to provide guidance to other employers as they facilitate their transition to remote working. Additionally, Dell’s employee resource group that champions a flexible work community by creating a collaborative work environment has also made best practices available that integrates people regardless of where, when and how they work.
Furthermore, Dell is working with its customers to determine several factors including what IT solutions fit the needs of their operation as well as helping their employees safely and securely utilize their IT once distributed.
To help employers optimize their remote work efforts, Dell is inviting customers to join us for webcasts featuring its HR, IT, and Security experts who are responsible for shaping and implementing Dell’s flexible work policy and environment.
LinkedIn has 15,000 courses on LinkedIn Learning in 7 languages, including courses about the benefits of working from home. Learn more here.
New to working from home or just looking for a way to make it more efficient now that your housemates are also around? LinkedIn now has a free learning path with 16 online courses that can help. These courses feature top tips from remote work experts.
Maximize Efficiency and Productivity of Remote Work: These courses provide work/life hacks that can help you create a productive remote work environment, optimize your schedule for peak productivity (including meaningful breaks to help you avoid burnout), and show up the way you want to on video conference calls:
- Working Remotely – 1 hour
- Time Management: Working from Home – 1 hour 25 minutes
- Productivity Tips: Finding Your Productive Mindset – 59 minutes
- Executive Presence on Video Conference Calls – 34 minutes
- Thriving @ Work: The Connection between Well-being and Productivity – 41 minutes
- Managing Stress for Positive Change – 57 minutes
- Building Resilience – 34 minutes
- Developing Resourcefulness – 18 minutes
Managing Remotely: Managing and leading teams under normal circumstances has its challenges. So, how do you lead a team remotely and make sure to keep your people engaged? Learn how to encourage productivity, engagement and boost morale remotely with the following courses:
- Leading at a Distance – 36 minutes
- Managing Virtual Teams – 56 minutes
- Leading Virtual Meetings – 32 minutes
Get to Know Your Remote Work Productivity Tools: For many, a new work environment means new virtual technology. Get to know the productivity tools that will help you connect with colleagues when you’re not in the same physical location:
- Learning Zoom – 45 minutes
- Learning BlueJeans – 1 hour 11 minutes
- Learning Webex – 44 minutes
- Learning Skype – 1 hour 4 minutes
- Microsoft Teams Tips & Tricks – 1 hour 1 minute
Thriving in the New Normal. Learn effective ways to work remotely and manage your well-being. In partnership with Thrive Global, SAP seeks to provide a trusted destination that delivers insights and Microsteps everyone can all take — as individuals, teammates, managers, leaders; and as friends, siblings, parents, and even children. Get Expert Insights here.
Twilio
Additional Resources
Accenture
Working with companies including ServiceNow, Accenture launched People + Work Connect, an employer-to-employer initiative that brings together companies laying off or furloughing people with those companies in urgent need of workers. The Accenture-built platform enables companies to quickly share the experience and skills of their laid-off or furloughed employees to connect with other companies seeking workers. It is global and cross-industry to maximize the ability to deploy people with similar skills in one industry into other industries where jobs are being created. The tool is free for employers to join and use.
Amazon
- A free Basic eBay Store for three months
- No selling fees through June 30 (up to 500 orders)
- Powerful selling tools and insights
- Access to eBay's 180+ million buyers
Intuit
Intuit’s Aid-Assist is a free, AI-driven platform that creates a personalized recommendation for small businesses on which relief program they qualify for as a result of COVID-19. The platform goes even further by providing an estimate of how much aid small businesses are eligible to receive, and how much of their government-provided relief will be forgiven. Aid-Assist uses cutting-edge technology to integrate hundreds of thousands of pages of compliance regulations into an easy-to-use interface, similar to Turbo Tax.
Intuit’s Small Business lending product contains a hardship provision where QuickBooks Capital customers in impacted emergency areas are able to pause payments and interest for up to eight weeks. Customers should call their QuickBooks Capital team and request the payment and interest pause, or visit this site for more information. As part of its support for small businesses, Intuit was recently approved to distribute small business loans as non-bank institutions through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a fund designed to keep Americans on the payroll of small businesses across the United States.
Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 Threat Intelligence team provides insight on COVID-19 cyber threats to inform about what is happening and how to protect yourself and your organization. Learn more here.
Supply Chain Management. SAP wants to help ensure that your supply chain remains unbroken. With free access to SAP Ariba Discovery, you can post your sourcing needs and get quick responses from suppliers who can deliver – from all across the world. Minimize shipment delays and respond to consumer demand. Connect now here.
Travel. Get automatic alerts, itinerary updates, and flight monitoring. Download the TripIt app between March 13 and 31 to get TripIt Pro free for six months. Existing users receive complimentary premium service upgrade for the same period. Download the free app here.