
As a New Orleans native and a Business Technology Strategist professionally, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are always on my mind due to our area’s susceptibility to hurricanes. Therefore, I’m always looking for ways to help my clients prepare for natural disasters and other unforeseen events, such as our current COVID-19 Global Pandemic. One of the best ways to keep the business operational (and hopefully profitable) is to set up a remote workforce.
If a business model is conducive to working remotely, the first step is to put some ground rules in place. This is done by introducing policies that outline data protection and cybersecurity requirements, remote access systems, and HR-related procedures.
Data protection and cybersecurity policies are going to be vastly different for each company depending on whether or not you have to follow any federal compliance, such as HIPPA. For remote access systems, there are numerous ways to work this out, and I’ll go over some of my recommendations a little later. HR will need to work with your IT team to determine the company’s technological capabilities and then write the necessary procedures. Then they can notify employees who are approved to work from home and detail what reporting requirements they will need to follow while working out of the office. This can even go beyond business continuity and become an employee benefit.
The next step is to choose and set up the tools needed for a remote workforce. Let’s breakdown some options that I often recommend to my clients.
2. Connectivity Tools
3. Hardware
While this article is about business continuity, I would feel remiss if I did not elaborate on my earlier point of using remote work as an employee benefit. I actually have many clients who offer this as a standard benefit to their workers and there are two major reasons to consider incorporating this into your company’s standard benefits as well.
Speaking from experience, while setting all of this up is not difficult, it is time-consuming. So, if you weren’t set up for remote work before our current crisis and are now leaning hard on your IT team, just remember that this isn’t something that can be turned on with the flip of a switch.
If your company needs assistance with creating, enhancing, or maintaining business continuity and disaster recovery plans, ECS + My IT can provide the necessary expertise.
New Orleans
6620 Riverside Drive, Suite 200
Metairie, LA 70003
504-888-6948
Shreveport
347 W. Bert Kouns Industrial Loop
Shreveport, LA 71106
318-219-3427