Since the pandemic, businesses have experienced rapid changes, some of them inevitable and adverse. As a result, the concept of business continuity has become a fundamental priority. 

The rapidly evolving work environment has placed an unprecedented focus on adopting IT infrastructures and policies in favor of remote work through business continuity planning. But what is a business continuity plan and how can typical businesses achieve this goal? 

Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan is a roadmap enabling enterprises to maintain essential functions during and after a business disruption. In the case of remote work, the plan outlines procedures for ensuring workforce productivity, goal management, and communication. 

The modern work environment has increasingly become uncertain. So, having a continuity plan that addresses your systems and processes is imperative to increasing your chances of operating safely and efficiently in the face of crises.  

Steps for Creating a Continuity Plan for Your Workforce 

Connectivity and Architecture 

IT has been instrumental in supporting remote and mobile staff. However, the sudden rise in the number of people working full-time from home is an overwhelming phenomenon. This means you have to scale up your current remote access infrastructure to ensure your employees access enterprise applications, data, and files every workday.  

What it means to scale up includes ensuring your remote teams have strong and reliable internet during working hours, increasing the scope of your data center to accommodate more users, and providing the necessary tools and devices. 

Performance and User Experience 

Ensuring access to your systems and processes remotely is one thing and achieving superior performance and user experience is another. For example, access to enterprise cloud services through corporate backhauling solutions such as VPNs can be sluggish and this may impact employee morale and productivity. So, find ways to simplify connections, speed up access, and improve user experience. 

Systems and Network Security 

The strong security culture and measures adopted in the workplace should also extend to staff who work from home. Remote users translate to more opportunities for threats to penetrate your defenses.  Enforce strong security policies to minimize disruptions and downtimes such as multi-factor authentication, antivirus software, and security monitoring tools. 

Secure Backup and Recovery Plan 

Backing up everything from your system, data, server, files, to applications is instrumental to minimizing the impact of a cyberattack, human error, or other disruptions. Besides backups, ensure you have an elaborate disaster recovery plan for when things go south. Remember you cannot predict when a crisis will occur and its impact on your business. Having a disaster recovery plan is a valuable component of ensuring business continuity for remote working. 

Effective Management 

Management is broad, encompassing aspects such as planning, organizing, actuating, and controlling. The strategies above are mostly IT-oriented. Effective management is concerned with the human aspect of remote work. It focuses on identifying key employees and their roles, enhancing communication, conducting regular check-ins to ensure employees clock in for work, and developing an influential remote working culture. 

How Thinline Can Help 

Thinline Tech is a trusted partner in network infrastructure hardware and software solutions that can streamline processes to realize efficient operations. We specialize in a diverse range of services, including cybersecurity, IT service and support, cloud solutions, managed service provider, and business continuity. So, we’re best suited to help you achieve reliable remote business work that can withstand whatever challenges you may face. 

Check our service page for more or call us at 410-453-9300