When Mother Nature blankets the whole city in snow so fast that the plow trucks can’t keep up, while sustained negative temperatures cause rolling blackouts, you chalk it up to Missouri Weather (shoulder shrug mandatory) and make the best of it.
Missourians are subject to all sorts of weather anomalies, but a can-do or laissez-faire attitude won’t get you far in the middle of a blackout.
Just like you prepare your family for inclement weather, you should also prepare your business.
Explain the dos and don'ts of taking technology home.
From security to simple functionality, you shouldn’t assume your employees know best practices for taking your tech back to their home offices if they can’t make it into the office or get sent home to work.
Stress that laptops, cell phones or other digital devices should NOT be left outside for extended periods of time. It can ruin the devices or freeze the display, rendering it useless for your business.
If a device gets left outside, it should NOT be used until it has reached room temperature to avoid any additional condensation issues within the device.
All users bringing office technology home should have strong passwords on their home routers and have multi-factor authentication running on all SaaS applications.
Have a Blackout Plan
In the unlikely event of rolling blackouts across Springfield or Joplin, your employees should be prepared to continue working from your office or their homes.
Use Mobile Hotspots.
If the power goes out, so does your Internet service. And with it, your hope of getting anything done with your work-from-home tools. So, your employees need to know how to find and use a mobile hotspot.
Most smartphones are equipped with hotspots but may not be available on all your employees’ cell phone plans. You just need to know which employees have this feature and which will need hotspots provided.
Charge All Your Devices.
Rolling blackouts shouldn’t last longer than an hour, but using a hotspot or desktop application will quickly drain the battery from cell phones and laptops.
Use whatever warning you have before a blackout (or the potential of a blackout) to charge all devices.
Forward Your Office Calls.
When the power goes out, it will disable any landline or plugged-in phone to receive calls from clients, vendors, or partners. If you have a VoIP system, your employees should forward all their phone calls to their cell phones.
Create Backup Plans.
No plan is foolproof, so having paper and pens around is a good backup in a power outage. Just make sure you have batteries or another light source so you can see what and where you’re writing.
With a bit of forethought and some essential preparation, your business should be well on its way to weathering this storm.
