Should HR consider tech competence equally importantly as basic numeracy & literacy?

From the CEO down the company hierarchy to the evening cleaning staff, employing new hires nowadays demands a rethink in terms of the basic competencies required to perform any job. Gone are the days of employing an accounts clerk who struggles the moment a spreadsheet won’t load, and they have to call or ticket IT support – only to be told to ‘turn it off and turn it on again…’. 

We are surrounded by so much technology that almost everything we use nowadays requires an internet connection to work; especially as artificial intelligence (AI) and the IOT (Internet of Things) gain commercial popularity. Consequently, basic tech competence is as important, if not more, than being able to compose a grammatical sentence or add a column of figures mentally to perform a common-sense numeracy check of a spreadsheet. 

It goes without saying that if an Excel file contains 10 rows of figures, none of them greater than 20, that the sum in the ‘total’ column should never reach more than 200, and every employee ought to have the mental ability to perform such a common-sense real world mental verification before sending a quote to a customer or whatever. 

Grammar and spell check tech

Equally, despite spell-check software improving all the time with AI, grammar is still incredibly important. A teacher of young children apparently once received the below title of an essay from one of her pupils. According to the child, the document had passed MS Word’s spell check function, but it caused some hilarity in the staffroom: 

“Today I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse.” 

Now imagine that sentence when the teacher received the essay typed with a lower-case J on Jack… 

The point is that tech is all around us from the cradle to the grave. We rely upon it completely, no more so than in the workplace, where competence with hardware, software and cyber-security are paramount. For that reason, CEOs should spread the message throughout their organizations that technology practices are equally important as basic math. Likewise, C-Suite people might also insist that their organizations use a system-wide Virtual Private Network (VPN), or at least ensure that each and every employee, especially when working from home or remotely, uses a VPN extension on their chosen device. 

The trend for BYOD (bring your own device) to work has grave implications for any organization for two fundamental reasons. Firstly, the possibility of hackers breaking into a company network from unknown malware on an employee’s device is bad enough, but even an innocent email sent from one colleague to another from a person’s phone in the coffee break could contain an attachment that could infiltrate the workplace IT environment. 

Remote working safely from hackers

Not least, if employees are working remotely, they might think that the shopping mall public Wi-Fi they’re logged onto at Costa is perfectly safe, but the guy sitting in that hoodie three tables away has created a phantom hotspot, and he’s watching your employee type her LinkedIn password into her laptop. A VPN can obviate this, as it would immediately detect malware activity and the browser extension would disconnect from the hotspot instantly. 

But just to clarify, how does a VPN work, and what are the advantages of using one? 

A VPN is a third party, encrypted, secure server that sits between the user’s device and their usual internet service provider (ISP). The fundamental advantages are that the VPN user can choose where the encrypted server is located, anywhere on the planet. The server is also anonymized so in effect it’s impossible for a hacker, the ISP or a government agency to know who is accessing the internet and from where. The internet protocol (IP) address might appear to be based in Minnesota or Mexico, when in fact the VPN user is sitting at home in Hawaii! 

The main advantages to this anonymity are online security because hackers usually target known individuals from social media profiles, especially when new platforms like Threads come along. Equally, hackers love to try breaking into business websites. Using a VPN when working from home or away on business trips also allows access to geographically restricted content and avoidance of data ‘throttling’ restrictions. 

A VPN for work and leisure

We already saw how a VPN would cut off the device from the internet connection if it detected malware probing from hackers, but a more everyday plus side to using a VPN is access to your favorite TV shows or websites if you’re working remotely or on vacation. For example, Netflix and Disney + in the USA only allow certain content to be accessed internally; mainly for copyright and contractual reasons with film studios. But if you’re on vacation in Europe and want to tune into your favorite show, you’d only need to open your VPN dashboard and choose a stateside server from which to access the web. Within seconds you can be watching Netflix as if you’re at home in the States. 

Furthermore, if you’re a P2P file sharer or heavy-use gamer, you might find your ISP slowing down or ‘throttling’ your domestic internet connection if you’re using too much data. But accessing the web via your VPN means that they don’t know who or where that data usage is from, so they simply can’t throttle the connection. Same goes if you’re working from home uploading and downloading very large files.

In summary, whether employees are working from the office, remotely or at home, on their own device or their employer’s workstation, senior people in any organization would do well to make the use of VPNs mandatory for all staff.

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