Business Continuity During Social Distancing

Mar 18

What can we do?

Like most, your business is probably struggling to maintain momentum at this challenging time. Safety of friends, family and colleagues is the priority right now. For many social distancing means working from home instead of the office.

Covid-19 isn’t good for businesses who aren’t prepared.

If you are a business owner or in charge of technology in your company, your colleagues will be turning to you for a solution. Here are some simple questions to ask yourself and recommendations to consider.

How can you keep your business running with social distancing measures in place?

Can your team physically work from home?

Honestly, you may be out of luck if your business requires physical presence in a location, for example bars, restaurants and dentists.

Recommendation

Consider changing your operating model by moving online and promoting this in your community. Setting up an online store may not be as difficult as you believe.

Is this the first time you have allowed working from home?

If your business can work online let's look at options for your team.

Set-up a digital office

There are three main sets of tools available to you for this

Office 365 by Microsoft
G-Suite by Google
A mix of individual tools such as Slack, Dropbox and Zoom

Each has pros and cons; some require more set-up than others and have different monthly costs. For now, we will focus on why you need them and specify which parts will make you most effective while working from home. All can be up and running on a credit card in a number of hours.

Video conferencing

The best tool in the working from home arsenal is to engage with your team face-to-face. Video conferencing allows you to maintain a visual connection with your team. Seeing physical cues adds to the quality of the teams interaction.

Recommendation

Pick a service that suits your needs
Most video conferencing services will work in the majority of cases
Schedule a daily video call with the team to plan the working day and discuss any issues
See the section below that deals with tools and equipment for additional considerations

File sharing

Many companies who don't have regular working from home arrangements will typically have an internal server. The team have access to in the office for sharing files. This server may be unreachable outside of the office. Luckily, there are many file sharing tools which you can move to. Microsoft and Google include these tools with their offerings alternatively Dropbox is an excellent standalone file sharing tool.

Please keep regulations such as GDPR in mind while migrating to these services.

Recommendation

Choose a cloud file sharing service for your team and move the essential files to keep the team working effectively.

Can you provide the tools and equipment needed to make this practical?

Not a lot is required to work effectively from home. The essentials are;

A laptop or PC
A webcam
A headset with a microphone- the best you can afford (or possibly your kid's gaming headset)
A good seat

If you have staff working at home for the first time, you may need to supply some of these items to your staff. Check with IT equipment suppliers that they have stock on hand or a guaranteed delivery date before purchasing. In most cases, you don't require a very powerful laptop or PC to respond to e-mails, work on documents or have video conferences.

A word of encouragement

Even for the least tech-savvy amongst you, this is possible, you can do it. It may be frustrating and even hard at first. Persevere! If it's too much - reach out. We can help.