Over the last few months, businesses worldwide have recognized the insecurity of business continuity during COVID-19. Obviously, the situation is fluid, and while there are solutions on the horizon, we have no way of knowing when they will be viable. The only certainty is that many businesses are in danger. 

This post is the first in a series, and the next post will be found on this site in one week. 

At Tech One IT, we have been called upon to initiate work-from-home protocols for large and small businesses. As we take a holistic approach, we have derived ten questions that we use to assess each client’s resilience. Using their answers we build a resilience strategy. Here are the first five questions:

1. Are your employees happy and driven at work?

Employees rarely cite unhappiness as a reason for quitting, but frankly, all reasons boil down to not being happy. Given that the cost to replace each employee is approximately one-third of that employee’s annual earnings, making sure that employees are happy and driven should be a priority for any organization.

According to SHRM, the most common reason for quitting a job is a lack of career development. This can often be easily fixed by allowing employees to work on a project outside of their ordinary job scope. Citizen developers can often lend new perspectives to projects. Still, by working directly with IT, the company can be more assured of data security and the longevity of any changes made.

Tech One IT frequently works with employees across the enterprise to ensure that projects work as expected, rather than as dictated. If you’re interested in our IT Solutions, get in touch today!

2. Is your data secure?

Companies have already spent thousands — if not millions — on encryption, firewalls, data loss prevention software and other security solutions that promised to keep them safe. Yet the same scenario continues to unfold: A breach occurs. It’s unclear what happened, and when the security team goes to pull the data, the logs are missing. Or a device goes missing, and only once it is retrieved does someone realize encryption was not turned on. The complicated web of too many security tools, a lack of security resources, and failing or decaying agents creates a major challenge for business and tech leaders alike.” (Forbes)

Our IT Solutions team has initiated work-from-home standards for companies large and small recently. We set up cloud services for data sharing, but we go several steps further, ensuring data workflow documentation is set up, hardware is locked down and documented, and employees are aware of risks, and therefore compliant.

3. Can your employees work from home?

This is an easy question, that many managers may believe easy to answer. Unfortunately, there are many layers to the question: Are your data systems set up for easy access to employees so that files can be shared without cyber attack risk? Are your workflows set up so that each employee understands the correct protocols for remote working? Are you using secure tools to communicate? Have your employees been trained on how to work proficiently from a busy (or potentially quiet) home? Our agile coach, Orlando Manuel Ramirez (Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership & Organizational Development), offers our clients services that set them up for success regardless of workplace. 

4. Is your organization’s trajectory clear to all employees?

In our experience, many employees are not looped into their employers’ goals. Annual meetings may cover the annual goals and strategy for getting there, but many employees are in the dark when it comes to understanding their own role in reaching that goal. Dr. Ramirez is able to break down enterprise-level goals in order to create plans for each department. 

This allows all employees to feel valued, improving employee loyalty and setting up the levels of success to be easily understood. By providing clear goals for each individual as well as the company as a whole, many companies find that they are receiving fresh ideas from the least expected employees. 

5. Are all investments being considered from a holistic point of view? 

Tech One IT promises each client a holistic approach to IT, regardless of services. When our client invests in new technology, for example, and engages Tech One’s IT Solutions team to implement, we consider the following:

• How will the tool will be used initially?
• Will the tool expand (or retract) with the company?
• Are there possible implications to other tools in place?

Every company should ask vendors whether their approach is holistic to save time and money going forward. But, that’s another question that we will cover in next week’s post. 

Tech One IT posts valuable information for business owners trying to navigate the murky waters of COVID-19. Please check back each week for our next post. 

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