Snow? What Snow?

This week, our area has been inundated with that cold, white, wet substance that most people call SNOW. This was followed by its close relative: ICE. As expected, many businesses worked with a reduced staff or were closed altogether. But not Qualtrax.

Schools were closed all week, bread and milk flew off the shelves. And we are expecting more snow and frigid temperatures over the weekend.

Me? I’m not a fan, but that’s because I spent some years in Florida, where my skin grew thin and I learned to really, really, really not like snow or ice.

Snow sometimes strikes fear in the heart of employers, because it means your most valued resource, your employees, can’t get into work.  

We’ve solved that problem at Qualtrax by making sure each of our employees have the tools they need to work from home when needed.

While our local weatherman worked himself to a frenzy over the crazy weather, we were all set to continue serving our customers.

“How can you do that?” you ask?

It really only takes two items:

Planning

More than anything else, it takes planning. When life happens, whether it’s for snow, or a sick child, or the HVAC repair guy scheduled to arrive “sometime between 8 AM and 5 PM”, our employees need to have the option of getting their work completed from home. Knowing that ahead of time and solving the problem before it happens makes all the difference in the world. Which leads to my next item:

Tools

Each employee is responsible to know that they have the right tools needed to work from home. For some, that means using a laptop, for others, it’s all about having the right software on their home computer. We have systematically reviewed what our employees need to work remotely, and here’s a short list of items that make it possible:

• Laptops as main computers (so you can grab your machine and take it with you)
• VPN access (so you can log in remotely and get access to software and files on the network)
• Software tools, like project management and ticket systems, available in the Cloud, accessible from anywhere with an internet connection
• Phones that can be forwarded to home or cell numbers, and also phone software that works using VOIP (Voice Over IP)

These are just a few tools that we use to work remotely. It makes it easier to continue working when bad weather strikes, and, more importantly, it helps us all continue to serve you, our customers, without missing a beat. 

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