When the school holidays come around, if the work laptop is coming to the beach house, the caravan park or on a cruise, sort out how it’s getting online before you leave.
The easy answer is usually the wrong one: the wifi password stuck to the fridge.
Why holiday wifi is a poor fit for work
Holiday rental and caravan park wifi is shared with whoever stayed last week and whoever is in the next cabin. You don’t know who set it up, who else has the password, or what else is connected to it.
It also tends to get in the way of work. A staff member at one of our client businesses found the cruise ship’s internet blocked the secure connection back to their office.
The calls we get about this are rarely the ones people expect. Someone wanting everything checked before an overseas trip. Someone whose home internet address kept changing, so the office firewall shut them out again every few weeks until we stopped treating it as a one-off and fixed it properly.
The one habit
Turn on your phone’s hotspot and connect the laptop to that before you open your email.
Your phone’s connection comes through your own mobile plan, not a network shared with strangers, and it’s protected by a password you choose.
Check these before you go
- Change the hotspot password on your phone to something other than the default.
- Check your plan’s data allowance. Video calls and big file syncs use a lot of it.
- Keep the phone on a charger while it’s sharing. A hotspot flattens the battery quickly.
- Test the laptop on your hotspot at home first, including anything that connects back to the office.
- Turn the hotspot off when you’ve finished for the day.
- If something won’t connect, ring IT rather than trying the next wifi network you can find.
Going overseas or out to sea?
Ship and overseas connections can behave differently again, and roaming charges add up fast. Tell IT where you’re going and when before you leave, so any problems get sorted while you’re still in the office and not from a deck chair.
And if you don’t need to work on this break, leave the laptop at home. That’s the most secure option of all.
If your business wants a simpler setup for staff working away from the office, get in touch.