Lessons We Must Learn From The Pandemic

Pandemic Lessons guest post by Sandra Dunne, Manager, Logicalis Ireland

Apparently, it was the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus who said, ‘It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.’ And boy, did people react well to the COVID-19 crisis.

Global leaders were left with no choice but to transfer entire workforces to home offices and manage new ways of working in a more difficult economic environment, while these very workforces got to grips with working, communicating and innovating remotely during a time of great uncertainty.

While the crisis is far from over – the initial scramble to quickly transition and continue business as usual has passed. Now, organisations must reflect on their response to the pandemic and learn how to prepare for the future.

Lots of Irish organisations, whether accidentally or on purpose, realised that they already had the capability to enable workforces to work from home and it wasn’t so much about installing additional infrastructure, but more around ensuring that this infrastructure could be secured for and accessed by employees across various locations and devices. Of course, people also needed to be equipped with the necessary tools to work from home.

In saying this, many businesses still had to pivot and adapt their strategy, with more resources placed on providing people with remote access and implementing hybrid platforms in order to facilitate greater agility

Agility remains absolutely crucial

Companies must continue to adjust, be flexible and evolve – not only from an IT strategy and technology perspective but also in terms of work patterns, customer interactions and business models. After all, adaptability is crucial for business continuity – especially in circumstances where many plans will have been created without fully recognising the long-term impact of a global pandemic.

For example, one common shortcoming was the focus on local site outages and physical data loss. This is of course a critical issue to resolve, but the most common projected scenarios were natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Recovery plans quite rightly reflected these worries, focusing heavily on migrating data or falling over to another site when a primary location went down.

These plans assume that there will always be an alternative functional site, but what happens when all sites are inaccessible? The pandemic forced us to consider this possibility.

Therefore, future plans must accommodate more extensive outages that impact not just the physical organisations, but also people and vital social resources like transportation. That requires new provisions like location-independent data, applications, and personnel.

In addition, the world is becoming more open to permanent remote working environments – with the likes of Twitter and Indeed offering their Irish workforces the option of working from home for good – so businesses need to prepare for this with continuous evolution and innovation of their IT infrastructures, delivering flexible, modern IT environments with robust unified communication capabilities and secure mobile components.

The importance of interaction

The pandemic has further highlighted the need for a broader focus on businesses’ most important asset: its people. It hasn’t been easy for employees to be isolated from their teams and to carry out their daily responsibilities without in-person support.

With people spread across various locations, there has also been a serious shift in terms of how people interact. This is something that companies have needed to consider both from an internal perspective, colleague to colleague, and externally, employees to customers.

As remote working becomes a more permanent reality and in the absence of those in-person connections, businesses need to look at how they are engaging. Virtual has served companies well in the short-term but new methods will be required to facilitate communication and collaboration in the long-term.

It is vital that staff understand that their colleagues and employers are still there and that customers realise that the IT solutions and services they have invested in will continue to support them through the changes that lie ahead. It’s about coming together to make this new world work.

Decision-making and transparency will also be incredibly important to ensure people understand how they can connect, communicate, and collaborate when working remotely – which many are enjoying and doing so effectively. In turn, this will help to drive innovation and growth.

New remote working plans mean companies have to support employees with policies that focus on their wellbeing. We may also see the creation of new positions such as ‘Head of Remote Working’ to ensure that the new normal is managed in an optimum way.

For some, their individual mental health has been challenged during the pandemic, so, moving forward, organisations must factor in the health and wellbeing of their people.  For some, this could mean understanding and setting clear boundaries to ensure a healthy work/life balance. For others, it could be expanding the channels of communication beyond emails.

Prioritising positivity and proactivity

Business leaders need to reconsider the thinking around when and how to get people back in the office. Instead, we must focus on the positive changes that have been made and that we can continue to make. It is key that organisations continue to make strategic decisions and capitalise on opportunities to innovate, thus driving bigger benefits from what can only be described as a world-changing situation.

There’s another valuable gift that executives can give their employees during this crisis and that is hope. Giving employees an ability to create, contribute, and cooperate has a huge impact not only on their wellbeing but also on the company and even society at large.

In May, Logicalis launched its Global Innovation Challenge to encourage our teams to come together and devise innovations that can bring about positive change to the world. It’s brought our people together, allowing employees to explore their creative skills, and making them feel part of something bigger at a time where it’s easy to feel isolated.

It has been and will continue to be a challenging time for everyone, but there are some positives learnings we can take from this crisis. We are resilient, even under such difficult personal and professional times, and we have adjusted, pivoted and survived. Now it is about evolving, investing and thriving.