Summary of the week

As the weekend approaches, I am sure that you will be as pleased as I am to reach the end of one of the strangest weeks in business ever known.

The entire globe is fighting a pandemic which has turned all our lives upside down leaving the world of commerce struggling to find a method of coping.

Some clients have experienced increases in business and some complete down turns in sales.

You can imagine that for us, working in IT, our clients are relying on us to help them with their home connections, remote working and general connectivity to keep their staff working as safely as possible.

Technical Support Issues

The support questions this week have certainly been plenty & mainly based around VPNs dropping, remote software configuration and IP telephony.  I’m pretty sure in the coming weeks we will hear more concerns over internet speed and see more problems with viruses.

Team Motivation

With everyone remote working, we have been calling each other regularly and trying to keep the ‘human’ factor in each working day.  For some of us the laughter and general office banter is always warming and suddenly we are all apart, these are challenges facing many businesses.  I saw one report that suggested people are working more hours, but flexibly – perhaps there will be a big impact on our working practices when this is over as the workforce adjusts its lifestyle across the coming weeks.

Our suggestion to our team, is to be relaxed at home, but still dress for work and be ready at the normal time – with increased video facilities, no one wants to see you eating cornflakes in your pyjamas on a conference call, we do need to remain professional after all.

Training

We have plans to turn Glyn into the ‘Joe Wicks’ of IT training, with regular free video posts on Microsoft Office products and perhaps a bit of off-the-cuff question time.  We have had a few new tools to play with, but settled on using Zoom – starting Tuesday 31^st March at 10am he will bring you an Excel “bite size” session 30 minutes long.

Keeping Busy

Im enjoying calling our clients, a few each day to find out about the impact this crisis is having on their day to day lives and how they are coping, listening to the strategies they are adopting and what they feel the future will hold for them.  I feel that in the main, so far, everyone has been able to adapt quickly and will seek the relevant government grants and subsidies when they become available, in fact the overall feeling is actually quite optimistic that in a couple of months the business community will survive and return more flexible.

There’s no denying my view from the window is more attractive than my normal daily office panorama – I’m hoping to get a little more done outside at the weekend to improve it further, including cutting the grass – I expect everyone’s gardens will be beautiful this summer.

Ill write a further blog early next week, including one on data protection and security measures as two of our biggest concerns.

My very best wishes,

Jacqui