Work from home is not an easy thing to do. As a payroll outsourcing company that has implemented ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 standard, we anticipated Covid 19 Pandemic as a significant risk that affects both health of employees and the business. But the company needs to mitigate how this new risk without neglecting other risks, which are information security and how to avoid misunderstanding between employees if employees work from home.
Also, the employees need to accept this change condition because the facility at home may not be proper and include how to take care of a child when she works at home. In contrast, the company needs to provide IT infrastructure such as a VPN (a virtual private network) to get safe access.
After the government orders employees to work from home and social distancing, we chose how employees can maintain social distancing and avoid this pandemic with these policies.
| 1. | The company allows employees to buy vitamin C and masker and reimburse them as a medical allowance to avoid pandemic. |
| 2. | The company provides individual thermometer to ensure that the employees work in the right health conditions because the employees can measure his/her body temperature before he/she goes to work. |
| 3. | The company orders the employees not to use public transportation anymore because the risk is higher to get Covid 19 pandemic. Even the company provide temporary settler at office or apartment for employees to stay. Or the employees can work in the disaster recovery center, which is another available office to maintain social distance in office and avoid public transportation. |
As the following week, the condition worsened, so both employees and management decided that the senior consultants can work from home. At that time, the senior consultant has been more ready to accept the condition, and the IT Team has prepared to prepare VPN and laptop to be prepared to use at home.
However, this is not enough, we evaluated what we learned from senior consultants on how to face working from home, and we found that the internet at home is not as good as expected, and some employees cannot open the big files. So IT can make improvements such as utilize the remote desktop access from Microsoft server under VPN, sot that the employee can be fast to access the big file without comprising the security. At last, on 1 April, we were ready to work from home for the whole office and conducted an online meeting once a week and prepared a new standard operating procedure and policy so that everybody will be aware and proactive to work from home.
We see this as a spirit of continuous improvement with the implementation of ISO 9001 and ISO 27001, and we have relatively ready to have foundations of information security and work quality which is follow
| • | Use myquantumhr, our cloud software with encrypted and verified by Global Sign. However, we develop an additional function, which is check-in and check out from home at employee self-services. |
| • | Use VPN technology to access server, so that we keep safe information |
| • | Use basecamp software that we have implemented since January 2020 so that everybody can do according to the checklist and report daily. |
| • | Use zoom or skype to have a monthly meeting between two office locations, as we have work in two places since September 2019, now we make it into once a week. |
| • | Have a Good Corporate culture to meet with Key Performance Indicators. Our Key Performance Indicators are accurate, on-time, and confidentiality |
We hope the government and our society can control this Covid 19 pandemic as soon as possible, so that we can survive and keep healthy. With a service company, we hope this story can give an idea of how infrastructure and company culture can support each other