The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) has published information and guidance about coronavirus intended to help community and voluntary organisations and volunteers to decide next steps they may need to take in light of the spread of the covid-19 virus. Their page is updated daily with the latest government advice and what this means for voluntary organisations, as well as signposting to useful information from other organisations.

Working from home offers people more flexibility and were you a remote company, you could build a culture where people set their own hours and work at their own pace. However, under these circumstances, you may decide it is important that people maintain their normal office hours and are expected to be online and responsive within those hours.

Make a plan — the first important thing now is to set aside time to come up with a plan if you haven’t already. If you don’t have a People team in situ, it’s a good idea to assign this transition to a small task force internally.

Find a quiet space — ask your team to think carefully about where they will work, if at home.  Do they have a room they can use as an office? Do they have access to a quiet space for calls? As schools are closed along with offices, having a quiet call at home will be challenging.

Get IT support backup — you will need redundancy in case your current IT person is sick or just overrun.

Prepare for at least two months of fully remote working — better to be over-prepared.

Also address mission critical questions:
– Can everyone login into everything?
– Does your team know who to call if their device crashes?
– Does your team have contact info for your Dedicated Customer Support person for the tools you’re using regularly? (e.g. at Zoom, Salesforce, etc.)
– Does your team know how to forward calls to their mobile?