Flexible Working preparations enabled employees from GemaTech’s customer, HCL (Healthcare Locums) to provide business continuity during the very heavy snow in February this year.
HCL used GemaTech’s call re-routing technology to allow call agents to work flexibly from home so that they did not have to come into the London office. This saved HCL both time and money in addition to providing a seamless service for their customers as Tricia Duncan, Project Manager explains,
” Many of our staff found that getting into the city during the heavy snow was impossible. It was really easy to re-route selected incoming calls to our employees, and our customers had no idea that anything was different from the way in which we normally handle their calls.”
Business Continuity Plans Are The Answer To Severe Weather Disruption
Keith Tilley, UK managing director of SunGard Availability Services, who gives advice on how businesses can avoid disruption told Reuters that planning in advance could have made all the difference to maintaining services and productivity in the heavy snow of February 2009.
“Every company should have a business continuity plan,” he said, adding “communication is essential” to both staff and customers. (Reuters, Tue Feb 3rd)
Billions of Pounds Lost Due To Snow
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) estimated that 6.4 million people took the day off on Monday 2nd of February which equates to a fifth of Britain’s workforce. The FSB estimates that this day alone cost the British economy £1.2 billion. Workers were either unable to get to work due to transport disruptions, or had to stay home to look after children as schools had been closed.
Thousands of Schools Closed
On Monday 2nd February the Guardian reported that more than 1,500 schools were closed in the South-East, 441 were closed in Yorkshire and Humberside and 244 were shut in the East Midlands.
London’s bus service was suspended, something that was not even experienced during the blitz in the World War Two, despite the weather being forecast days in advance.
Organisations should be planning now for any repeat of these severe weather conditions. Enabling flexible working is a tried and tested solution to providing business as usual as HCL can testify to.
Tags: flexible working business continuity snow, flexible working snow
