With the continuing spread of COVID-19 across the globe, are you considering options for your business?
Japan has asked companies to let employees work from home. A number of countries, including the US and UK, have asked companies to prepare themselves in case working from home is required.
As Ireland has now confirmed several coronavirus cases, businesses need to be prepared for disruption, even if all of their employees remain healthy (as we hope they will do).
Individual workers may need to self-quarantine if they have been in contact with someone with coronavirus, or whole companies may be asked to work from home if coronavirus spreads within Ireland.
As such, we wanted to share a list of things that you can do to prepare your company for working remotely during challenging times and minimise the disruption caused by this global health crisis:
Business Continuity Planning – Checklist of preparatory actions in responding to COVID-19
by Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation
Top 10 Tips to be Coronavirus ready
- Have a management meeting to review your business continuity plan and make any updates that are needed.
- Assess your staff’s ability to work remotely. Whilst some tasks cannot be done remotely, aim to enable as many tasks as possible to be done from employees’ homes.
- Have all of your staff test their remote connectivity now, ideally from home so that any issues with internet speeds etc. can be identified now.
- Have a discussion with your staff now to make sure that your plans are complete. They may catch something that your management team has missed.
- Make sure that your company contact list of mobile phone numbers and home phone numbers is up to date and available to all company members. Be clear which numbers can be given to clients and which are for internal use only.
- Make sure that any conferencing tools, such as Microsoft Teams are licensed for everyone working remotely.
- Ask staff to adhere to best practice hygiene rules such as washing hands thoroughly, using hand sanitiser and coughing and sneezing into a disposable tissue or sleeve. You may want to ask your staff to avoid handshakes for the next few months.
- If your employees don’t have laptops but may be expected to work from home, now is the time to consider getting them company-issued laptops. Company issued laptops should be more secure.
- With supply lines in China disrupted, we may start to see shortages on technology items. If you’re planning any critical technology purchases in 2020, consider expediting them.
- Coronavirus phishing messages are making the rounds. Remind your staff to be extra careful about clicking on links or opening attachments in emails about coronavirus
Can We Help?
If you complete an assessment and your IT equipment needs updating in order to enable working from home, please contact us. We can also advise on working from home best practice.
