Every year we are confronted by news reports of severe disruption caused by the weather. Flooding, snow and fog all lead to serious problems for UK businesses, from staff stranded due to grounded flights and cancelled trains, to water damage to infrastructure and premises. Indeed, one week of bad weather back in early 2013 was estimated to have cost the UK over £318 million in lost productivity.
Smart companies are not only aware of the trouble adverse conditions can cause them but are well prepared for it. They know that employees may be unavailable with little notice and that the systems they rely on to work and communicate can be put out of action through no fault of their own, or their supplier. These companies have robust contingency plans that see them safely through winter. And, crucially, these are the companies that are likely to gain business, rather than lose it, when the weather is bad.
Here are some ways that you can avoid the worst this winter:
1. Manage the staff shortage
The aforementioned week of bad weather in 2013 led to severe staff shortages, with approximately 18% of people across the country unable to make it into work. But simply knowing that business will suffer from unavailable staff is not enough. Companies need to know how to mitigate against the weather and avoid substantial financial loss.
Communications providers now offer services to manage inbound call routing, that enable staff to answer the phone wherever they are. Instead providers can set up an immediate redirect for each line to an alternative destination, such as a mobile. Suddenly businesses can operate with an agile workforce, making and receiving calls and using cloud technology to access files, folders, contacts and applications, as if in the office
2. Prevention planning
The trick to any disaster plan is working out what to do before the event, not after it. A good telecommunications provider will meet with a business’s IT department to discuss what the priority systems are prior to installation, ensuring the right choices can be made when selecting connectivity types and consideration for resiliency can be made during the project design phases.
This is all the more important for businesses with multiple offices, who by their sheer scale are more likely to have multiple employees affected by weather and transport chaos in multiple locations.
3. Train all staff
Modern communications technologies mean that data and voice services can be accessible wherever there is an internet connection and on any device. But the responsibility to keep businesses going does not entirely lie with the provider. Employees need to know how remote systems operate and who to contact for support when needed.
Effective training on how to access tools remotely is a must for companies looking to put in place a workable disaster recovery plan – particularly if staff are not home workers to begin with. Most cloud for business systems can be easily accessed via a web portal. But if employees don’t know where the portal is or what to do when they get there, businesses will be no better off than if remote working provisions had not been made.
Summary
If you haven’t already taken steps to winter-proof your business communications, now is a good time to be speaking to one of our experts about how you can enable staff to work from home or an alternative location, without costly interruption to business, namely:
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Replace ISDN lines with flexible SIP trunks
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Divert office bound calls to alternative numbers
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Twin staff mobiles with their desk phones
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Enable key workers to make and take calls from home
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Consider conferencing rather than commuting
Don’t get caught out this winter if trains are cancelled or road blocked with snow and ensure your organisation can operate business as usual without the winter disruptions.
