With the number of countries and cities on lockdown increasing daily more and more organisations are looking to remote working solutions to keep working during the current pandemic.
The nature of many tech industry jobs means that working from home is perhaps more possible than for many other industries, and for the UK, a 2019 *CIPD Job Quality Index survey reported that 54% of the UK’s workforce works flexibly.
For the businesses that can’t easily allow employees to work home e.g. manufacturing, bricks and mortar retail, construction, events and entertainment, transport and logistics etc, the threat of a shutdown of work for what could be an unspecified period creates a real menace to the life of the business. The situation also presents a problem for many small businesses, sole traders, and self-employed people who may not have resources to last-out ‘lockdowns’, self-isolating, disruptions and complications caused by the spread of the coronavirus.
For companies where the nature of business makes remote working possible and with lots of organisations using cloud based technology, meaning they are less reliant on office based computers, now is the time make sure that relevant staff can securely access company systems and intranets remotely and that they have **VPN’s installed.
Many organisations are running remote working test over the next few weeks to ensure they can keep the business running whilst most, or all staff, are working remotely. Making sure your staff have a secure connection is business critical, you do not want a computer virus ruining your day!
This situation also highlights how business continuity planning and disaster recovery plans should have disease epidemic and pandemic scenarios built-in to them for the future, and this situation is likely to expose what work needs to be done by many companies in the months and years to come.
If you require and help, advice, or assistance with the facilitation of remote working due to Covid 19 please contact us now on 020 8778 7759.
* CIPD – The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
**VPN stands for “virtual private network” – a service that encrypts your Internet traffic and protects your online identity.
