Business Continuity and Coronaviris
Discussion
I work from home anyway. But have two public engagement projects running, one of which is scheduled to run through to mid / late April. Looking at throwing some additional resource to this in order to complete sooner as having to curtail or suspend that will be a major-league PIA.
International stuff is already hit and not really much we can do - we need to be on the ground. Should be going to Berlin next week which we could do but then the plan was to head onto Cyprus but they've banned people who've visited Germany 14 days prior.
Even if I skipped Berlin, Cyprus is in a very perilous state (not being reported, why I don't know) with the south closing the border to the north which is causing a great deal of tension and likely to become very nasty any time soon.
Skype is helping to a degree. But I rather suspect I'm going to be spending time cleaning up my computer and brining my admin into meticulously precise order.
International stuff is already hit and not really much we can do - we need to be on the ground. Should be going to Berlin next week which we could do but then the plan was to head onto Cyprus but they've banned people who've visited Germany 14 days prior.
Even if I skipped Berlin, Cyprus is in a very perilous state (not being reported, why I don't know) with the south closing the border to the north which is causing a great deal of tension and likely to become very nasty any time soon.
Skype is helping to a degree. But I rather suspect I'm going to be spending time cleaning up my computer and brining my admin into meticulously precise order.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Same here tomorrow, have a feeling this is going to escalate nicely, can see this week being the last office based. No real probs until you add possible schools closed and then wfh becomes really bloody hard. Even needing 15 hour days to cover normal activities.All I need to work anywhere is a internet connection and my laptop. We are already pretty much paperless.
WFH is easy, but my work is based out on the road. There will be a time when I run out of reports and admin stuff to do.
Wife is a legal secretary and they think they can work from home - but it’s not been properly tested yet. They also like paper a bit too much and it will be testing for the older entrenched solicitors.
WFH is easy, but my work is based out on the road. There will be a time when I run out of reports and admin stuff to do.
Wife is a legal secretary and they think they can work from home - but it’s not been properly tested yet. They also like paper a bit too much and it will be testing for the older entrenched solicitors.
When the risk gets bigger .....
O - all incoming deliveries to a neutral unmanned location
O - Pay a driver to take our post to the post office 2 x a week
O- (My personal fav) BAN all visitors to our HQ most are a PITA anyway (we run a non customer facing eCom business) lols
O - stockpile toilet roll, tissues, lemsip, tea, biscuits and chocolate
LOLS
O - all incoming deliveries to a neutral unmanned location
O - Pay a driver to take our post to the post office 2 x a week
O- (My personal fav) BAN all visitors to our HQ most are a PITA anyway (we run a non customer facing eCom business) lols
O - stockpile toilet roll, tissues, lemsip, tea, biscuits and chocolate
LOLS
We did a test on Sunday by getting as many people as possible to log in from home. Approx 60,000 employees in Europe participated and no issues in system capacity. US locations are implementing A/B split teams with each split working from home for a week and the others in the office then swapping over.
We are doing a WFH test half on Thursday half on Friday designed so it's people that sit together on alternate days. Office of maybe 2000 people?
Also imposed travel ban . And not letting anyone into our office that has been to italy, South Korea or china in the last two weeks. Employee or visitor.
Also imposed travel ban . And not letting anyone into our office that has been to italy, South Korea or china in the last two weeks. Employee or visitor.
Medium sized financial banking institution, treasury function, we've split the team in half, half working from home for the next 2 weeks, half working from the office, then we switch. Designed to minimise the risk of someone catching it and wiping out the whole team.
I'm not complaining, wfh for 2 weeks lets me crack on with other things!
I'm not complaining, wfh for 2 weeks lets me crack on with other things!
Small IT company so we can work from home.
We have failover for our internet, VPN , VM servers. and have both desktop VM's and terminal servers available. We use cloud based VOIP so we can just take our phones home with us or use a client. All our servers have lights-out management enabled so we can bring everything back up remotely if there is a power outage of significant length.
We also have a pessimistic cash flow forecast based on the assumption that we will receive no additional income other than that we have already received so we know exactly when we will go bust if the s
t really hits the fan.
We have failover for our internet, VPN , VM servers. and have both desktop VM's and terminal servers available. We use cloud based VOIP so we can just take our phones home with us or use a client. All our servers have lights-out management enabled so we can bring everything back up remotely if there is a power outage of significant length.
We also have a pessimistic cash flow forecast based on the assumption that we will receive no additional income other than that we have already received so we know exactly when we will go bust if the s
t really hits the fan.We are small husband and wife team with 8 staff, 3 of whom are on site so they can keep away from the office unless urgent and another 2 who are at our production site so they never come here anyway although the drivers do go there so there is some cross contamination possibility.
The rest of us have no real choice as we all work from the depot with customers coming and going all the time plus our own vehicles coming in to be loaded / unloaded etc and stock needs to get in too.
We are just keeping everywhere as clean as possible. Reminding everyone to wash their hands and wipe down surfaces etc.
The phones have been quiet the last few days. I think things are going to get serious if this carries on.
We make most of our profit from April, May and June. This could not come at a worse time, we have had a really tough few months with the flooding and wet weather so we have just been waiting for March... and now its here we are not having the normal increase we get around now.
We have enough due into the bank from Feb to probably keep us going into April. After that we are either looking at going under or putting my own money in to keep afloat. The issue being if we get another bad winter into 2021 and we cant survive that I might not get any of that back... I have worked flat out the last 14 years or so and it looks like if things go bad this could wipe us out in a matter of months.
To make matters even worse we need to buy stock in the next few weeks and some of this comes from China and as a result there is a bit of a shortage right now.
Rock and hard place!
The rest of us have no real choice as we all work from the depot with customers coming and going all the time plus our own vehicles coming in to be loaded / unloaded etc and stock needs to get in too.
We are just keeping everywhere as clean as possible. Reminding everyone to wash their hands and wipe down surfaces etc.
The phones have been quiet the last few days. I think things are going to get serious if this carries on.
We make most of our profit from April, May and June. This could not come at a worse time, we have had a really tough few months with the flooding and wet weather so we have just been waiting for March... and now its here we are not having the normal increase we get around now.
We have enough due into the bank from Feb to probably keep us going into April. After that we are either looking at going under or putting my own money in to keep afloat. The issue being if we get another bad winter into 2021 and we cant survive that I might not get any of that back... I have worked flat out the last 14 years or so and it looks like if things go bad this could wipe us out in a matter of months.
To make matters even worse we need to buy stock in the next few weeks and some of this comes from China and as a result there is a bit of a shortage right now.
Rock and hard place!
robbieduncan said:
US locations are implementing A/B split teams with each split working from home for a week and the others in the office then swapping over.
Mrs B's company doing the same. I work at a private psychiatric hospital. Business as usual at the moment. Our hygiene regime is pretty robust anyway.
Will be interesting to see how well domestic broadband holds up to the demands of home working.
Lots of companies will be stressing their remote working / VPN systems no doubt, but if broadband gets overloaded it could take us back to the good old days of 56k dialup speeds!
Suspect those that can will be encouraged to WFH very quickly (next week is my guess). My study is as well equipped as my desk at work, and nearer to the kettle! Microsoft Teams seems to work pretty well, so I can happily WFH for a while.
Lots of companies will be stressing their remote working / VPN systems no doubt, but if broadband gets overloaded it could take us back to the good old days of 56k dialup speeds!
Suspect those that can will be encouraged to WFH very quickly (next week is my guess). My study is as well equipped as my desk at work, and nearer to the kettle! Microsoft Teams seems to work pretty well, so I can happily WFH for a while.
jep said:
I've got 2 bars, and working from home is not an option for any of my staff... If we as a country go on lockdown, or the govt advises against community gatherings, then it doesn't take a genius to see what'll happen 
We are moving our bank runs from once a week to twice a week, just in case the bank decides to close and we end up with a weeks worth of cash we could otherwise use in the bank account which we cant get in there as they are shut.Gassing Station | Business | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff