Covid-19: Business resilience and remote work
When New Zealand had its second wave of Covid-19, we were reminded about preparing for unwelcome circumstances. Crises like these can be alarming for business owners and stressful for staff, clients and customers. What happens to your company culture when no one interacts in person?
Technology can build resilience into your business, improving flexibility, streamlining workflows and offering new opportunities as others become untenable.
Communication
Video communication, screen-sharing and recording technologies have become indispensable to remote teams. Your social club doesn’t have to shut down either – the virtual happy hour is part of the new normal.
Our tips:
Run team-building and social events over video conferencing. Try a weekly drop-in happy hour or a quiz night. Mixing up scheduled and spontaneous events lets people join when convenient and keeps up non-work interaction.
Record videos and demos to train and on-board new staff. With more staff joining teams entirely remotely, training videos are an evergreen way to support new hires who miss out on an in-person induction.
Team members can record their own video introductions and icebreakers to welcome new remote staff.
Use collaboration apps such as Microsoft Teams or Slack to keep open communication channels on a variety of topics. Encourage its use for wider community engagement.
Support asynchronous communication to keep things flexible. Some staff may need to adjust their hours because of changes in their circumstances, such as children at home.
If you’re still running an onsite PBX system for your call centre or hunt groups, look at moving to a cloud solution, such as Teams calling.
Collaboration
Manage loss of visibility with collaboration and workflow tools, such as Office 365 and Planner, Google Docs, Jira, Trello, and Asana. Teams can work on living documents, interacting real-time on projects and workshops.
Our tips:
Run a brief daily meeting to check in with tasks and keep everyone on the same page.
Interactive online whiteboards and touch screens may be able to replace some in-person workshops. Visualise planning sessions, annotate documents and use digital sticky notes, with options ranging from free to premium. Check out Miro, Mural, A Web Whiteboard (AWW), or Microsoft 365 Digital Online Whiteboard.
Support online messaging through apps like Microsoft Teams, Slack, or Google Meet for solving spontaneous issues.
Opportunities
Going remote creates new opportunities. Entrenched habits can be re-evaluated, and right-sizing your systems can reduce costs. Adapting to new challenges will make your business more flexible, whether it means hiring remote, multi-national and freelance team members, or automating paper-heavy processes.
Our tips:
Switch paper-based invoicing, billing, human resources, and health and safety processes to digital.
Traditional brick-and-mortar stores can set up e-commerce platforms, online ordering and POS software for new sales opportunities, as well as the safety benefits of contactless pick-up and delivery.
Check if your cloud resources and hosting are right for your needs. Scaling back is a huge cost-saving opportunity.
Look at how flexible and remote working supports your employees in reducing the impact of travel and balancing work and home demands.
Security
Working from home can mean your staff are less likely to be on a secure corporate network. Ensuring everyone has up-to-date knowledge around cyber security best practices is more important than ever. Now is also a great time to get your Business Continuity Plan updated.
Our tips:
Set up password management apps, such as 1Password, Dashlane, LastPass, or BitWarden, for team access and encourage individual use.
Set up two-factor authentication on company technology. Options include Microsoft Authenticator, Google Authenticator and Authy. If your team needs a method that doesn‘t require their phone, check out YubiKeys.
Make sure antivirus software is in place and up to date.
Educate staff about Covid-19 phishing scams and how to avoid them. You'll find the latest information about Covid-19 misinformation and scams on the New Zealand Government’s Covid-19 website.
Review your Business Continuity Plan. How did it help you respond? Where were there gaps? Was it a useful resource, or unused in your response to Covid-19?
New technologies can support and connect your teams through all Covid-19 restriction levels. Set boundaries to ensure it’s complementary to teamwork, and not overwhelming. If you’d like help exploring these ideas in your business, please send us a message so we can chat.