Isolation And Business As Usual

In the modern world your IT resources are set up to guard against viruses and keep your IT infrastructure working, sadly though the IT guys can’t do a great deal to protect your staff from the kind of viruses that people are vulnerable to!  What we can do is help you to weather these difficulties in a more productive way. It’s so often the case that businesses have little in the way of emergency strategy for dealing with those days when the employees simply cannot attend the office.  It doesn’t have to be this way! The current advice regarding self isolation if you suspect you have been exposed to the COVID-19 pathogen is designed to prevent the exponential spread of disease. It means that you could find yourself in a position where an otherwise healthy and fit for work employee has to sit at home and wait it out, both that employee and your company would benefit from a plan that allows them to carry out their duties remotely so they can login and get on with some work whilst keeping their germs to themselves!  This is also useful in the event that your employee needs to be home to wait for a delivery, or has a sick child they need to stay home with and it can keep your whole office working when snow brings our transport network to a standstill.  

The cost of setting up this kind of back-up plan may be less than you would expect as most of your employees will already have the equipment they need at home and will just need access to the necessary systems granted to them.    

They will need:

• A Windows 10 laptop or PC
• A copy of Microsoft Office (2007 or newer, already covered if they are an Office 365 user)
• A phone
• Internet access

With a modern SIP system the physical location of the user isn’t normally a problem, your employee can both answer calls and make them on your business number.  With the older phone-line based systems call forwarding is usually possible but your employee will only be able to receive inbound calls to the business number, outbound calls will come from their own phone number.  To receive business calls the employee will need a phone, this can be a desk phone, cordless phone or even an app on their existing mobile.

Note that while remote working from a Windows 7 Laptop or PC, or a Mac is possible not all options work so well – we recommend a company-supplied Windows 10 laptop for remote working to avoid home applications, children and games being mixed onto a work computer.

YVTS can help to set up this system for you.  If you need any of the above equipment we can advise which ones would be best value for your needs.  Once the equipment is in place the employee can remotely access emails, shared calendars, network drives and remote printing.  Meaning business as usual whilst the quarantine is in place.

Get in touch and let’s get your business ready for this!