How Businesses Should Handle the Coronavirus. Business of all sizes across the world are being impacted by the spread of coronavirus COVID-19. The influence the coronavirus is having on global travel, commerce, trade, and investment is immense and greatly affecting the world’s economy. As a local small business owner, you may think your business is immune to these effects, but it most likely isn’t.

One of our TAG Board Members, Fred Moore of Moore Computing was supposed to go to a trade show in a few weeks, but it was canceled due to concerns about the coronavirus. This may seem minor, but it serves as an example of how local businesses are further being affected by the spread of the virus.

This got Fred’s attention and made him consider the true impact the coronavirus might have for not just his business, but his IT Services clients.

How Businesses Should Handle the Coronavirus (COVID-19)

In the past few days, the CDC updated its guidance for businesses about the COVID-19. Click here to read the guidance yourself. Beyond the items mentioned in the CDC guidance, we wanted to suggest a few other steps that you should take inside of your business to prepare for a possible pandemic:

1. Please review your business continuity plan, and make any updates that are needed.
2. Now is a good time to review the list of people who can work remotely. If your office needs to be closed for 2+ weeks, make sure that everyone who needs remote access has it.
3. If your staff occasionally works remotely, have them test their remote connectivity sometime in the next few days.
4. We’d recommend discussing with your staff now to make sure that your plans are complete. The scenario you should be planning for is a 2+ week closure of the office, which hopefully is a worst-case scenario.
5. Make sure that your contact list of cell phone numbers and home phone numbers is up to date in case you’re unable to reach people via email and need to urgently communicate something.
6. Make sure that any web conferencing tools that you use have a subscription large enough to handle your whole team if needed.
7. Consider whether to stock up on soap, hand sanitizer, gloves, and masks (which are already in very short supply).
8. If your employees don’t have laptops but may be expected to work from home, now is the time to consider getting them company-issued laptops. Be careful not to compromise security by letting employees use personal computers that bypass all of your cybersecurity measures.
9. With supply lines with China disrupted, we may start to see shortages on technology items. If you’re planning any critical technology purchases in 2020, consider expediting them.
10. As with any world news, there are already coronavirus phishing messages making the rounds. Remind your staff to be extra careful about clicking on links or opening attachments in emails about coronavirus (even if they appear to come from inside the company).
11. If you have to travel for business, consider the risk of the destination you’re headed to and the necessity of the trip. Make sure you purchase refundable tickets in case your travel plans are affected. Bear in mind most travel insurance won’t cover cancellations for these trips unless the insurance was purchased before COVID-19 became a global threat. Travel insurance is meant to cover unforeseen events and COIVD-19 is now considered a foreseen event.

As we all hope for the best it’s also important to prepare for the worst. Thanks again to Fred for all of his insight.