The Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic (COVID-19) is an actively evolving situation where the only thing that is certain is that individuals and businesses need to stay informed and prepared to tackle whatever the next several months may bring.

One of the top recommendations from health and government officials is to distance yourself socially from others in an effort to ‘flatten the curve’ and prevent the overtaxation of our medical and social resources - which for businesses means allowing employees to telecommute if possible. Mobilizing as much of your team as possible as quickly as possible to ensure business operations remain as stable as possible is key during a pandemic. This means planning and communication are likely to be your top priorities - even if that means you’re having to do it on the fly with little notice. The best thing you can do now is to set up the infrastructure you will need to remain connected to your team, members, vendors, and partners.

Here are some of the tools you can set up quickly and easily now to help you communicate and work effectively from home later:

• Videoconferencing tools to enable 'face-to-face' meetings
  • Google and Microsoft announced that they are giving away enterprise conferencing tools to help during the virus outbreak.
    
    
• Reliable Internet access
  • Make sure you have adequate bandwidth and security to keep you (and your family in the instance of a quarantine) connected. Coordinate with your team to ensure that they have sufficient access.
    
    
• Online communication channel
  • Get your team set up with the communication channels they will need now. Slack is a great tool for team and private communications and also offers many useful business integrations. AND you can create a channel dedicated to the pandemic where the team can look for updates and share any questions or concerns. Keeping your team informed, healthy, and taken care of means your customers and communities are much more likely to be informed, healthy, and taken care of.
    
    
• Mail services
  • Coordinate with your local post office to set up a mail hold or a mail forwarding service. See USPS’s page on managing business mail.
    
    
  • If you work out of a shared / coworking space, ask your provider about available services. Work Better is offering all in-house members complimentary mail open and scan and/or mail forwarding to help bridge the gap between their office and their home office.

• Phone services
  
  • Depending on your service provider, you likely have many call service options from call forwarding to setting up a softphone. Look into your options now and make a reference guide on how to enable and manage these features.
    
    
  • Call services are another additional service your shared / coworking space provider may offer. Work Better operates with a robust platform that provides members easy access to setup and manage these features.
    
    
  • Are you a Work Better member and want to set up a softphone? See Essensys’ guide: Using Your Softphone App or feel free to reach out to your onsite team for assistance.

See Work Better’s COVID-19 Action Plan to learn more about our efforts to reduce the spread of the virus and the ways we will be supporting our members in the coming days, weeks, and beyond.

Looking for additional support while you work remotely? Work Better’s mission is to enable professionals and thought leaders to enact change - no matter where that’s from. So whether you need private office space for 1 or 140 or just the business services to keep you working remotely, we take your work seriously. Email us at join@workbetter.us or call us at 888-676-1297 to learn more.