The current coronavirus outbreak does not appear to be the serious global pandemic which some had feared. However, it has already caused substantial disruption to travel and working practices in China and may yet have an impact on businesses in the rest of the world.
We have been working hard to ensure our own business continuity, which ensures that of our clients. Unlike many of our competitors, who prefer expensive luxury offices in busy metropolitan centres, we have taken the approach that our staff should be able to work from anywhere. Our distributed workforce not only allows us to attract and retain the best people, it makes us prepared for any pandemic, including influenza.
Cross-sectional model of a coronavirus – scientificanimations.com – CC BY-SA 4.0
Hyderus has been working to ensure it can support its many clients, ranging from vaccine manufacturers, diagnostic developers and academic centres, in the event of a disruption to everyday life such as a global pandemic which might limit the ability for people to meet in an office.
Since 2004, we have been looking at how we could ensure our own business continuity in the event of a global pandemic — as the World Health Organization often says it is “a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’”. At the time, our office was the central point for people to be able to meet, communicate, work and access systems that were located at the premises.
We realised that when people were asked to self-quarantine and not leave their homes, our business would not be able to serve our clients. We reviewed all our Information Technology (IT) systems such as secure document storage and collaboration; accounting systems; telephone; conferencing systems; and project management tools and moved them into the cloud. We have been evolving these systems for over fifteen years and have even built-in redundancy to make sure if there’s a problem with one system, we have a back-up ready to go.
As the years have seen many changes in IT, we have kept up with them. Every employee, should they be restricted to working from home, has two methods of accessing the internet. We have a superior cloud-based telephone and conferencing system that works over regular telephone lines, over mobile systems such as 4g and now 5g, and through room-based video conferencing systems. Join by voice or video: the choice is yours.
All of our archives, files and accounts are available securely to all employees, wherever they may be.
For further information about our business continuity, please contact chris [at] hyderus.com
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