#WeekendWisdom 018 Pandemic Preparation
Welcome to #WeekendWisdom number 18. This week we’re going to talk about Pandemic preparation.
Pandemic Preparation – extras for Business Continuity Planning:
So in a pandemic situation, there are three items that you might want to additionally consider over and above your normal business continuity planning.
1 – Availability of key personnel
The first one is the availability of key personnel. How would you be able to continue to provide goods and services to your clients if certain key personnel were unavailable due to illness?
2 – Reduced supplier capacity
Similarly your suppliers. If your suppliers are only producing at a reduced capacity, are you going to be able to continue to do what you need to do for your clients?
3 – Set client expectations
Thirdly, on that basis, you should probably talk to your clients about what your plans are for the production of your goods and services that they get from you.
What about the technology side:
From a technology perspective then, if you have to capability for staff to work from home and that will keep you going that’s great.
Test work-from-home technology
But you should really test that situation now, before things become a crisis. So perhaps have all your staff, some evening at home, they all access the systems at the same time. As if it was during the working day and then see if your systems can handle it.
Get staff comfortable with tools
if you’re using Microsoft Office 365 or Google Gsuite or other collaboration tools, they’re great for people working from home, but make sure your staff are comfortable using them. So get them to test them now, in the office and get comfortable with them.
Don’t use personal email
Don’t encourage staff to use personal email accounts for communicating in a work from home situation because there might be security and GDPR considerations there.
Watch out for “crisis” scams
And finally you want to make sure to watch out for additional scams that people might try to perpetrate in this time of crisis.
So that’s it for this week. Let’s be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.