Staff cannot access files working from home: what to do

If staff cannot reach shared files from home, the cause is almost always that the files live on a server inside the office and nothing outside the office has a route to it. There are three ways to fix that properly, and one popular way that causes more problems than it solves.

The popular wrong answer is a mapped network drive over a VPN. It works in a demonstration and it is miserable in daily use. File operations over a VPN are slow, opening a large spreadsheet can take minutes, and applications that expect a local disk behave badly when the connection wobbles. Worse, some file formats corrupt when a save is interrupted, which is exactly what a dropped home connection does.

The first proper fix is to move the files to cloud storage, SharePoint or OneDrive for a Microsoft business, with local sync on each machine. Files are available offline, sync when the connection returns, and version history covers the mistakes. For most small businesses this is the right answer and it also removes half of your backup problem.

The second is a remote desktop or hosted desktop, where staff connect to a machine that is itself inside the office network. Everything runs where the files are, so performance is unaffected by home broadband speed. This suits businesses with line-of-business applications that genuinely need to sit next to their database.

The third is a properly designed VPN used for applications rather than file access, reaching a line-of-business system or a specific service, not dragging documents down a tunnel. This is a perfectly good use of a VPN and it is a narrower one than most businesses assume when they ask for one.

Which is right depends on what the files are and what opens them. Documents and spreadsheets: cloud storage, nearly always. A design or accounting package with a shared database: remote desktop. A mix: often both, with the documents moved out and the application left where it is.

Two things to settle at the same time. What happens to a laptop that is lost with company files synced to it: the answer should be encryption and remote wipe, both of which are included in most business cloud plans. And whether people are emailing documents to themselves to work at home, which is a sign the official route is too painful, and a data problem you cannot see from the office.

One more scenario worth naming, because it is common and rarely stated out loud: staff who have solved the problem themselves. If people are emailing documents to a personal address, or working on a copy in their own cloud storage and pasting it back later, the official route is too painful and you have a data problem you cannot see from the office.

That is not a discipline issue. It is feedback. People route around friction, and the fix is to make the sanctioned path faster than the workaround rather than to write a policy against it.

Whichever approach you choose, settle the device question at the same time. A laptop with company files synced to it should be encrypted, enrolled and remotely wipeable, all of which are included in most business cloud plans and all of which are far easier to apply before the machines are distributed than after.

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