Workforce Continuity: A Key Element to Weathering the Storm
In the face of natural disasters, political unrest, epidemics and other business interruptions, companies have to keep their critical systems and resources online. That's a given these days. A key element of business continuity planning that's often overlooked, however, is ensuring employees can still do their jobs when the floodwaters begin to rise -- what iPass terms "workforce continuity."
A company's workforce is one of its most important resources, after all. Employees provide the valuable skills necessary to keep the business running day in and day out. With a workforce continuity plan in place, a company ensures its employees can still communicate, assess information and make decisions in times of crisis.
iPass workforce continuity solutions
Enabling workforce continuity today means giving employees a way to connect into the critical systems and resources they need to conduct business—should a company's primary work centers become unavailable or if employees are otherwise compelled to work from other locations.
iPass helps companies prepare for the unexpected by providing connectivity and device management for the distributed workforce. These solutions are specifically designed to address incidents—large and small—that affect people's ability to travel and congregate as well as those that may force an organization to quickly relocate operations to another facility:
The iPass Virtual Office service allows employees to conduct their work from home over fixed broadband lines provided by iPass as well as from remote locations through the iPass global network.
Using the Device Management service from iPass, IT staff can retain control over connection security and device management during a disaster or disruption, from wherever employees are connecting.
The iPass Hosted Authentication service supports hosting of customer AAA information. iPass hosts this service in its hardened Transaction Centers, which are globally distributed and have failover capabilities to protect against regional disruptions.
It's not all about gloom and doom
Enabling remote and mobile access to corporate IT systems and resources can definitely give companies a competitive advantage when disaster strikes by ensuring workforce productivity. However, there are other benefits as well. For example, a company may find it easier to attract talent by offering flexible work hours and locations. A company that has remote and mobile access in place will also likely see increased overall productivity, as employees will be able to work anywhere and everywhere.
Ensuring uptime when things go down
Staying operational is the key to remaining profitable for any business. Whatever workforce continuity plan a company puts it place, it needs to make sure that the technology is a good fit with its business model and that end users have the necessary resources in place and training to take advantage of the technology.
With the iPass Virtual Office service, getting connected remotely becomes a part of an employee's normal routine and helps enterprises continually test their workforce continuity preparedness. Companies gain the peace of mind that their employees will be ready to work remotely for as long as it takes to weather the storm.
Learn more
Download the new IDC White Paper sponsored by iPass to learn about the analyst firm's recommendations for enabling a workforce continuity solution that ensures employees are able to connect to the critical systems and resources in the face of disasters and interruptions.
1. Lauren Olsen. The Telework Two-Step: Agencies Dancing Around the Issue. Telework Exchange. April 2, 2007.
Business continuity drives telework
In a recent survey of federal telework coordinators, 47 percent noted continuity of operations (business continuity) as the main driver for telework in 2006. This was followed by work-life balance and fluctuating gas prices.1
Enabling workforce continuity
1. Segment employees by the criticalness of their role. A customer-facing role such as a customer service representative may be much more important to get back online in an emergency than an inward-facing role such as a software engineer.
2. Evaluate business processes and determine how critical each is to maintaining revenue flow and customer satisfaction—the two factors most at risk during an outage.
3. Determine which resources are required by each segment of workers. The systems that accountants need may vary widely from those needed by field representatives.
4. Evaluate locations from which access might be needed. Issue laptops to employees who might get stuck at airports, hotels or other locations. Enable home PCs in the event workers are confined at home.
5. Ensure employees are trained to use the continuity solution regularly. The best way to keep a workforce continuity solution current is to require people to use it on a consistent basis.
In the face of natural disasters, political unrest, epidemics and other business interruptions, companies have to keep their critical systems and resources online. That's a given these days. A key element of business continuity planning that's often overlooked, however, is ensuring employees can still do their jobs when the floodwaters begin to rise -- what iPass terms "workforce continuity."
iPass helps companies prepare for the unexpected by providing connectivity and device management for the distributed workforce. These solutions are specifically designed to address incidents—large and small—that affect people's ability to travel and congregate as well as those that may force an organization to quickly relocate operations to another facility:
Ensuring uptime when things go down