Carroll County Times Articles
>Help Your Business Survive Swine Flu
by David Hodgdon – October 04, 2009
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts that one-third of the U.S. population will catch the flu this year, with the average employee missing two to four weeks of work. This pandemic will cripple small- to medium-sized businesses, according to disaster recovery experts, unless you ensure your technology is not a source of the infection and use technology to keep your workers productive during their recovery period. Here are a few things you can do to pull your bacon out of the fire.
n Do everything you can to slow the spread of the flu. The swine flu spreads through personal contact, such as shaking hands, touching a keyboard or mouse used by an infected co-worker, and through the air by coughing and sneezing. When you're sick, shouting at a slow or locked-up computer covers your keyboard, mouse and desk with thousands of infected microscopic droplets. So watch whom you touch, use disinfectant wipes to clean your workspace, including the keyboard and mouse before and after you use them, and get your machines on a preventative maintenance support plan to eliminate the infectious outbursts caused by misbehaving computers.
Prepare for employee absence with remote access. No matter how hard you try to prevent it, you may still have much of your staff out sick at the same time. While no one with the flu is going to do much besides lie in bed and suffer, the week or two of recovery after the flu passes will leave them too weak to spend a day in the office but strong enough to work part time from home if they have access to their office computer. Some doctors believe this could actually hasten their recovery by eliminating boredom. While setting up remote access for your employees is safe, simple and inexpensive, it is best to have an information technology consultant assess your network's remote access capabilities, install any needed software or hardware and train your employees.
n Review your remote access policy. It is important that your employees understand with remote access comes the responsibility to maintain the privacy and confidentially of company data. Review or create policies for remote access (also called TeleWorking), then have each employee read and sign it. Keep the signed policy in their permanent employee files. Your IT consultant can provide you with a template for a network acceptable use policy to get you started.
For more tips on dealing with influenza in the workplace, download the Free Report: Guidance for Businesses and Employers to Plan and Respond to the Influenza Season from www.hfitservices.com/flu.
About the Author
David Hodgdon is an IT consultant, the owner of Hassle Free IT Services (www.HFITservices.com) of Westminster and a member of the Carroll Technology Council. Call him with your computer questions at 410-861-5615 or e-mail david@HFITservices.com. Businesses with at least 10 computers receive two free hours of tech support.
