Business Continuity – Inside Facts
One thing that has become evident during the past weeks, is El Salvador’s growing network infrastructure has played an integral part in the viability of businesses throughout the Country. The official response towards the COVID-19 crisis is one of the most lauded in terms of preparedness, not just in the region but in the world.
El Salvador has made huge strides in their business infrastructure and public safety sectors in the months leading up to the onset of the virus. It’s worthwhile to note that, in a welcome recognition of these measures, Moody’s upgraded the country’s score on March 12th from stable to positive. You can see more about Moody’s score here
As OSI maintains its position as the only fully operational BPO/call center in the country during these weeks of quarantine, we wanted to provide more transparency into our operations by asking a few of our employees to share their opinion on those crucial hours in which DR work practices were implemented
We reached out to Cesar and Williams, both account managers, as well as Edwin from our IT department with the following questions:
Has this remote work experience affected your relationship with your coworkers, and if so, how?
Cesar: There have been no negative effects, only positive ones! I find that the team is growing closer. We now make a point to meet online at 4:45am, 15 minutes before we start our shift, to check in with each other and encourage each other for the upcoming day.
Williams: Yes! In a way, you’re kind of invited into their homes when you’re in a meeting with them remotely, and they feel like they are more open to sharing about themselves. It’s brought us closer together.
How would you describe the change from working in an office environment to working from home?
Cesar: There are more distractions, of course, so you need to take extra steps to ensure you are productive. I have created my own office environment that helps me to be more focused.
Williams: Challenging! It’s great you get to be at home and get more time with your family and even help the kids with homework between some meetings and emails. But you have to keep following a routine, and I’ve seen several team members committed to finding the right one.
What can we understand as ‘work from home’ best practices?
Cesar: I think the best practices are those activities that help you to be your most productive self. Small things like making your bed and taking a shower early can set your mind in ‘work mode’.
Williams: Those values and principles that will make your remote job more manageable. For example, there is no such thing as over-communication! You no longer have your coworker next to you to shoot a quick question, but you can keep using the chat and phone to be on the same page.
What was the biggest hurdle you encountered in transferring two hundred workers to home offices?
Edwin: The biggest hurdles revolved around creating the different pools and personalizing each client’s environment within the systems we had to provide to our employees. Other than that, it was a battle against time to prepare the inventory, tagging computers, mice and headsets. Lastly, we had to deliver the equipment to the employees in an organized way.
What has been the most important lesson to take away from this experience?
Edwin: Definitely the importance of always being up to date with the latest technology. Leveraging our cloud network environment allowed us to create multiple pools of data and access such that when disaster struck it was an easy deployment from a software perspective
What were your priorities during those crucial forty-eight hours?
Edwin: Mainly, to investigate each client’s environment and adapt the right configuration accordingly. Other than that, we had to of course test the WVD’s to make sure once an employee started to work from home, everything would work fine.