Companies that previously laughed at the idea of working from home are now desperately wondering how to keep themselves and their employees productive during the realities of work-from-home-life.
It’s become clear that remote working policies should be covered by your BDR (business disaster recovery) plan as well as hygiene and social distancing for those who can’t work remotely.
Remote working policies should be covered by your Business Disaster Recovery plan
The BDR should cover a multitude of crises and can be adapted depending on the crisis that’s facing you. It’s never too late to make one even during a crisis, either.
With many workers feeling anxious about going to work, especially in cities where public transportation is widely used over cars, it’s important to respond to these concerns with a set of clear remote working policies and bringing the whole company on-board to facilitate it, this can’t be left to a local manager’s discretion and must come from the top.
For example your IT team needs to go round each department and work out what they require for working and ensure smooth access from home, your BDR should cover what happens in case a provider or service stops working and have alternatives you may want to deploy that are cloud-based and can be accessed from anywhere.
Security for your technology is important. A VPN is an important, first step
A working VPN is important, but you must know how to secure it.
If your IT team hasn’t done this before it may be worth hiring some outside help to assist them and provide an extra pair of hands. Going from everyone in the office to everyone remote will put a lot of strain on the teams that will facilitate this and it’s important to identify where you can get help if you need more manpower or experience.
Backup contingencies
Something else a lot of business professionals overlook in their plans is backup contingencies.
For instance, if you’re running a cloud based service yourself you may be getting a flood of new customers right now so will have to put more effort into sales and discounts whereas if you’re running something that may not be getting so many customers during this crisis you may want more resources to support your existing customers.
Clear communication with managers per your org chart
In your remote working policies, you should also include expected business hours and whom to check in with as part of a chain of command.
Here at Cooperative Systems, we use a business methodology called EOS/Traction. In it, Traction helps us define our org chart, who’s accountable for our departments, and whom they check in with.
Most employees would check in with their manager but if they are unavailable there should be a clear chain of command established because it’s important to know with whom to communicate. As mentioned before, be sure and leverage tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack, or Skype to chat via video and encourage your employees to use these tools as much as possible so their efforts are visible and staff is happy.