Business continuity
To me, Business continuity used to mean preparing your business infrastructure and staff for the occasional down internet connection or an unpredicted snow day to allow for remote work on a temporary basis. There are always a million “what if” or “if this happens, then what” questions to answer. Cloud has made the data access side of business continuity a much easier conversation – a VPN connection is no longer a mandate to be able to afford employees the ability to work remotely. In those conversations, it was never a question of if those employees would return to their usual office environment – but when.
Transitioning to Remote
In the shadow of the global COVID-19 pandemic, business continuity has taken on a whole new meaning. Companies need to ensure that a dispersed work force has all the tools needed to work from home efficiently. When working from home was a nice perk to offer to employees, these conversations focused primarily around voice, conferencing, and chat collaboration; video was considered a “nice to have” feature. With many companies moving to a fully remote workforce in recent weeks, video collaboration has emerged as the means of continued connection to our co-workers and clients, as well as the world around us. We use video not only for business interactions, but virtual happy hours, game nights, and our kids’ school lessons. Choirs rehearse remotely and music teachers continue to give private lessons through video, rather than meeting in person. Instead of going to the doctor, we make appointments for telemedicine to consult with medical providers remotely.
Connection
We need human connection. With social distancing, self-quarantines, and no-contact delivery playing major roles in our everyday lives, it’s more important than ever to find ways to connect with customers and one another. I don’t think we are at the point where video fully replaces audio calling – after all, it’s 2020 and I still don’t have my George Jetson flying car. I do believe it is worth asking – could most of our conversations shift to a video call? Is video finally the new voice?
Empower Your Employees Today
Fill out the form below to learn more about Allied’s remote resources.
