If your organization is embracing remote work for the long term, you’re not alone. We dropped in on Chad Wolfe, Production Engineer at Nationwide Insurance as part of our Powering Remote Work Virtual World Tour for a real-world look at how his team is solving for remote work. Here are three top takeaways from the U.S. leg of the tour.

Watch the replay for more first-hand, on-the-ground insights:

1. The pandemic changed the course of the organization.

Marie Ruzzo, Director of Remote Support at LogMeIn, hosted the conversation, armed with data from a recent global IDG study commissioned by LogMeIn that reveals how organizations handled the shift to remote work and how they are moving forward in the new work-from-anywhere era.

For Nationwide, the pandemic changed the course of the organization. They were planning to bring more people, including the IT staff, to a centralized location, but 2020 required a pivot to remote work that accelerated remote work readiness plans. That being done, now they are moving to a permanent hybrid work environment for the future.

So while the pandemic may have forced a global remote work experiment, many organizations have experienced remote work benefits and will no longer return to office-centric work models.

34% more U.S. workers will be remote for at least some of the time in 2021 compared to 2019

– Source: IDG study commissioned by LogMeIn, Ensuring Productivity and Security in the New Remote Work Era, 2021

2. A remote-first workplace requires remote-first IT.

Now that Nationwide wants to be able to hire talent from anywhere, employees need to be able to work from anywhere, and that requires IT to be able to support from anywhere. What tools do employees and IT teams need to be successful anywhere, anytime?

It’s time to re-evaluate. Now the mindset must be remote-first. Looking at solutions with this in mind helps you zero in the ones that will work long-term, as opposed to forcing an existing solution to work. As for remote support, Nationwide’s pre-pandemic evaluation ultimately led them to select Rescue for its ease of use, secure connections, ability to support off-network third parties, and helpful tools favored by technicians. In this case, their pre-existing solution allowed them to make the pivot to support an all-remote workforce during the pandemic and now them up for success as they transition to a hybrid future.

90% of US organizations are consolidating/reevaluating their technology purchases

– Source: IDG study commissioned by LogMeIn, Ensuring Productivity and Security in the New Remote Work Era, 2021

3. Advice to other IT leaders: Let financial agents be financial agents.

Remote work throws a lot of curveballs at employees. Technical challenges may be new to them and can take them away from their core responsibilities. To avoid burdening the people you’re supporting with a lot of extra work, use tools that make it easier for them to access and receive IT support, like a calling card installed on their desktop that gets them to the help desk in one click.

Also, listen to what capabilities your technicians really want in their support solution. They just might bring up features you didn’t know were important to them, as Chad experienced.

Marie and Chad discuss much more, including how Nationwide is handling an increase of cyberthreats, the importance of scalability in remote work tools and ways to reduce IT headaches in the remote work era. Watch the recording and check out more stops on the Powering Remote Work, Virtual World Tour to hear how IT and line of business leaders like you are navigating the future of remote work around the globe.