Preparation Matters - It’s the Little Things

When everyone was instructed to work from home in mid-March 2020, me and my colleagues at the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation were in a good position. We’d had an Alternate Work Arrangement framework established for several years and I was already working from home one day a week. MPAC has had a Business Continuity Management Program in place, long before the pandemic, and had practiced simulated scenarios. But how would this play out in real life? With everything else happening in the world due to the pandemic, this shift felt like a major disruption.

Some companies fared better than others and I am continually grateful for how well MPAC’s leadership, management and colleagues adjusted during this difficult time. The transition from working in the office to working from home went well, and within 24 hours the whole MPAC workforce was moved to remote work.

Fast forward a month into the pandemic when I had misplaced my laptop’s power cord. Under “normal” circumstances, I would walk down the hall and sign one out from IT Support. But in lockdown, with everything closed, I watched as the power levels dropped by the minute.  

After a panic email to the IT Support team, a director reached out and helped source a replacement power cord. Turns out, that as part of the MPAC’s business continuity plan, there is a distributed source of items that are needed on a day to day basis, including—yes—power cords. So within two hours, one of our IT Support Team members met me at a local subway station with a replacement power cord and I was back in action! WOW, most organizations won’t even get back to you in two hours let alone resolve your issue!

This is a small thing, a “first world problem” some would say. But as an employee, the ease of getting through an issue, due to the organization being prepared, meant that I could focus on my work and everything else happening in the world.

To me, this was a great measure of capacity—taking care of the small things quickly and efficiently—because the big things have already been handled. As an employee, this gives me confidence about the preparedness of the organization I work at—we can handle anything that comes our way!