Maintaining Business Continuity During The Coronavirus Pandemic
Much of the discourse surrounding the coronavirus pandemic is limited to personal health and safety. Whereas the Department of Homeland Security has plenty of recommendations for personal precautions, there isn’t the same level of discussion about how this will affect businesses.
However, as a business owner, you can’t just think about your personal safety – you have to think about your staff’s health, and your business’ continuity as well.
Understandably, if any of your staff members get sick, you’ll need to be prepared to continue without them while they are treated and recover. It’s important that you have a plan in place for sharing the responsibilities of any given staff member among your entire team while they are away. At some point, you will likely have to consider telling your staff to work from home, in order to keep people out of public areas and limit the risk of transmission.
Your Top Considerations For Business Continuity Right Now
You need to meet with your team and answer these questions – sooner rather than later:
How Will Your Staff Access Their Work?
- Will they need to connect to their office machines to use software?
- Can they work from their home machines?
- Are a majority of your documents in the cloud (Microsoft Office 365) and your applications web-based or do they need access to applications installed on their office desktop machines?
- Do they have a laptop that they could be taking home to work from?
How Will They Be Able To Access Their Office Phone?
- How will you deal with incoming calls?
- Do you have VoIP business telephone services in place?
- Will they use their own phones for outgoing calls?
How Will They Attend Meetings?
- Do you need a web-based meeting setup? (e.g. Microsoft Teams)
- If you will be holding video meetings, do they have cameras on their home machines?
The Key To An Effective Business Continuity Strategy
You could handle this on your own – if you have the time and expertise, then it’s likely a project you could take care of. But if not, then you need to partner with an IT support provider that can deliver a responsive and reliable cloud solution for your staff – allow Veltec Networks to help.
CLICK HERE to download our free COVID 19 Business Continuity Plan.
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