Work From Home In An Unpredictable World

Accops
March 17, 2020
6:27 am

Schools are being shut down, cinemas and other public gatherings prohibited, citizens advised to avoid travelling to affected countries, and employees are being asked to work from home.

From being a health hazard, the coronavirus pandemic is fast emerging as a much bigger challenge for public and private government organizations. Covid-19 is affecting businesses and how businesses are pursued. It’s impacting work and how work is done.

It will take some time to assess the real impact on the global economies. But businesses are already feeling the heat due to disruptions in the supply chain, travel restrictions, oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, and slump in the financial markets.

Impact On Global Economies and Businesses

Fears about the potential impact of the coronavirus pandemic are spreading like a wildfire as Covid-19 crisis continues unabated. Stocks have plunged, already wiping out trillions of dollars from the global markets. Nevertheless, shutting down offices and factories would have implications in terms of output and income. It is an immediate impact. The disruption in the global supply chain is likely to have long-lasting consequences. Today, businesses are fragmented but interconnected, with multiple units operating out of different geographies. If any one of those units gets affected, the entire line of business will suffer. Businesses will do well to remain prepared for a prolonged recovery process.

Need To Continue Business As Usual

Businesses across the globe are rightly focusing on keeping their workforce safe. However, keeping the businesses up and running is also of paramount importance, despite the crisis. While companies with a robust BCP will probably weather the Covid-19 crisis, those without one will have had learnt a lesson.

If anyone in your office gets infected, the virus will impact your life, too. Not necessarily only health-wise. The employer will be forced to stop others from coming to office or make them redundant, at least till the time things normalize. And if your employer doesn’t have a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) ready, your company may suffer huge losses. Companies need to keep their critical business operations running, no matter what.

Work from Home is the need of the hour

Taking proactive measures, organizations can set up infrastructure to allow their workforce to work remotely and protect them against the viral infection. Even if no one from the office has been infected, organizations can take steps to divide their workforce into multiple teams, asking them to work from different locations. It minimizes human interactions and intimacy, and thus chances of spreading the virus.

For such an arrangement to succeed, the organizations need to adopt VDI solutions, integrated with strong multi-factor authentication and endpoint control features. With a comprehensive Work from Home solution, employees working away from office can instantly access enterprise resources in a secure environment and play their business roles effectively.

Surviving The Current Crisis & The Unforeseen

Even as organizations are mobilizing resources to mitigate the Covid-19 impact, future remains as uncertain as ever. But the lessons learnt during this crisis will help organizations to prepare for the unforeseen.

What Covid-19 has underscored is the need for business to be resilient and prepared — traits that will stand businesses in good stead long after public health has been normalized. A comprehensive secure work from home solution to deliver a compliant workspace and access to applications to their workforce, will keep business operations steady during varied eventualities. The sooner enterprises take the leap, the better are the chances for them to flourish in the long run.