My COVID-19 Business Journey - PT. 2

The message to employees was simple, “We are a team and during these times this is going to be tested. As you probably know the governor of Nevada has requested the closure of nonessential businesses in the state. Although we are essential businesses we will be abiding by the order for the safety of our community and employees. We will be putting forth our contingency plans for both companies. It is my expectation that all employees continue to work from home with the “business as usual” philosophy with as minimal interruptions as possible. I know you may have a lot of questions as to how this is going to work, so I will try and address as much as possible in this follow-up email to our verbal discussion. I am not perfect, and I may forget a few things, so please check with your manager if you have additional questions.”

To not bore you with all the details as a reader, I then went department by department to cover all the rules that we would all be complying with during the shutdown. We covered human resources, accounting, marketing, customer service, management meeting directives and most importantly information technology.

The reason I needed to know if the employees had a home computer, internet and cell phone is because I needed to maintain the security of the confidential information from the server level, which required their desktop computers remain in the office for them to access. Pro tip: If you leave the desktop computers intact all the system configurations remain the same and you have uninterrupted technology issues. Let the employees take the computers home and good luck controlling what works and what does not work.

Now that employees could securely access the technology needed to do their jobs, I had to focus on the customer experience, which meant we would have to put our phone system to the test like we never had before. Our phone system did not require an actual phone on the desk even though we were still using them. We all downloaded an app on our cell phones and were able to put forth a unified front that appeared to the recipient on the other end of the phone as if we were in the office. Incoming and outgoing calls were made through the app. At the end of the day all you had to do was turn off the app, and your cell phone returned to personal use. And no, if anyone is wondering I did not pay for increased internet speed or cell phone bills during this time, nor did one of my employees request it. I was already bending over backwards to keep the ship afloat and they respected that.

Probably the most shocking situation in implementing the contingency plan was how unprepared our regulatory bodies were, offering little to no guidance. It was as if they required us to have a contingency plan, but they did not have one themselves. I guess the “practice what you preach” saying does not apply to government. Nevertheless, they were notified that our contingency plan was in place.

You can read the rest of this blog post on my website where it was originally published along with all of my other work:?https://www.highheelboss.com/post/my-covid-19-business-journey-business-as-usual

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