" Work is an activity not a location"

The whole world has gone mad, and yes with good reason, like the old Asterix comic book, I might quote " the sky is going to fall on our heads".

This might echo the way you feel right now, with all the news channels covering the virus, and you're favourite restaurant closed, life seems to have changed quickly.

As a CIO or CEO of a large company, or an Entrepreneur that started your company last month, the question now on your thoughts might be, are we ready for remote working. Do you have the right systems, procedures, and structures in place to ask your staff to work from home, and how will you manage them, once you can't see them.

What about your company culture, and the HR procedures you have structured so hard to create KPI's for your staff, how will you measure them ?

Once we make the transition to work from home, all these challenges face the senior executive, in some cases, remote working is simply not an option, the question is, on the road to recovery, how do we move forward and still do business.

Here are some ideas :

• When using ADSL realise this is not sustainable, Fiber or LTE routers is the only way to go.
• If requiring staff to work from home, can they complete the same functions, access the same systems, and be as productive as they would be from the office ?
• Install a cheap IP phone, or speak to your Telco to get a sip connection for remote users, they can then log into their office phone from home.
• Set up management time, or feedback sessions, via Skype to ensure the person feels like they are part of the team.
• Understand the company process, and deadlines, milestones and other project planning requirements that need to be completed, and make sure these can still be met considering the situation.
• Have a Business Continuity plan, understand that if your head-office or IT infrastructure has issues, everybody has problems, so can you replicate some systems at Data-Centers or have other plans in place.

It's not all doom and gloom, working remotely has many cost savings, and other advantages like travel decreases, employee satisfaction, cost savings on office space, to name a few.

" Work is still an activity not a location" so let's make sure we all work together.