Coronavirus/COVID-19 Checklist
Outside of the “does my team have the ability to work remotely?” There are additional items that you should be thinking of as well:
How will the team communicate in the event of internet outages or other related problems? Make sure everyone gets a hard copy on the company contact sheet and stores it at home. I remember talking to a law firm administrator that had a great binder of all their important info like this, but left it at the office when a hurricane hit.
Start your team working from home now. There can be glitches to work out, permission to be added, etc. That has them ready with no fear if the actual need arises. You will find shortcomings with any remote work setups, the more lead time you have to work things out, the better.
Ensure people have the right/modern equipment at home to use. For companies that are needing staff to use their personal equipment, we have been surprised by the number of extremely out of date devices in use still. These cannot be used to connect to modern infrastructure (to be clear, it is not that we will not do it - a 10 year old computer with Office 2007 simply will not connect to modern technology).
We will continue to update this article as we find useful ideas to share.
Please note that if you are a new client, our existing client base comes first. If you do need additional help however, we are not using this as a sales opportunity to lock you into a long term agreement. Just as always, all our service agreements are month to month, so know that we are a very quick and flexible option in the event you need help.
We recently sent out a note to our existing clients to let them know we have a plan:
Hello – we have had a few clients enquire about how to handle a 100% remote work situation in the event of a virus outbreak. We have put together a client contingency plan to enable 100% remote work. In the event that remote/home work is necessary:
Clear Guidance is fully setup for our team to work anywhere, including home. Every single staff member is equipped with a laptop that they take home and a RingCentral soft phone that works anywhere with an internet or cellular connection. There should be minimal interruptions to our business operations, except that we may halt on-site visits to clients in all but the most urgent situations. We stand by our commitment to open communication, and will notify you immediately if we make any change to our operations (such as working remotely) or processes.
For any clients that need a remote setup (for example users that do not currently have a laptop) we can setup a remote access server at your office (depending on resource availability) or in the cloud and install applications on it. The users will be able to access from any modern device (Windows, Mac, iPad, etc.)
For phone service, the majority of our clients are currently using RingCentral (or a similar system). There is a free mobile app that can answer your extension, mainline, call queues, transfer calls and more. Please let us know if we need to provide instructions or training for your team. If you have another system that does not support remote or device connectivity, we can quickly provision a RingCentral instance (again within a few days) and forward your company numbers to it.
If we receive multiple client requests for a remote access server and/or Ringcentral, please note that will increase our lead time. In the event that this turns into a major outbreak, it may take us several days to provision your new resources.