With the present crisis have come myriad cancelled events and travel bans, as well as consumer reluctance to travel voluntarily. While no one has been entirely unaffected by the virus, both the nature and the degree of the effects have varied wildly from one industry to another, with some struggling to safely meet unprecedented demand and others struggling to stay afloat with no customers.
With the current disruptive events driving health concerns for our loved ones, we also see a secondary impact: Our everyday concerns have expanded and can include much talk of boredom, cabin fever, stir craziness, and too much time on our hands.
A crisis is also a classroom in some respects. No one knows this better than treasury professionals, who, as managers of risk, in some ways spend their whole careers preparing for and watching for events where risks become reality in unexpected ways – events such as 9/11, the financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
We’ve discussed various ways the COVID-19 crisis could impact our technology, operations, and security concerns – but what about our people? Many of the staff now working from home have never done so before. Most were unprepared for their home to become their full-time office, and each employee has a unique situation with varying concerns and impediments.
In our previous post on the coronavirus remote work era, we discussed some technical and security factors that treasury needs to make sure they have covered as they send workers home. In this second post, we’ll talk about the challenges of continuing remote work, focusing on three areas: 1) backup plans, 2) extending the business continuity plan, and 3) capturing the gaps.
In what has been called a mass experiment in remote work, attempts to mitigate and slow the spread of coronavirus have led many companies to ask or allow their employees to work from home for the first time. Remote work, however, involves different considerations for different departments. Treasury’s considerations are complex, and neglecting proper setup can lead to problems.