Way-of-Life Interruption Planning
While we don't know how the Coronavirus will impact the months ahead, I wanted to share BBCA's contingency planning with you in case there is a way-of-life interruption in the NYC area. This may inspire some planning for you and your own team.
Since BBCA's inception 13 years ago, I have built the business with an infrastructure and process that allows for the agency to operate 100% virtually. In the beginning this was just for selfish reasons; I didn't want to have to always schlep to the office!!! But as we grew slowly during the first ten years, I realized that this approach offered many more benefits.
Our process was tested in 2012 with Hurricane Sandy, which was destructive to the NYC area, causing substantial power, flooding and transportation issues. At the time our client, one of the biggest global skincare brands, was not able to get to the office (public transportation was shut down), the company's servers were damaged and not operating and their team was unable to connect to their work from home. But during this time, my team was fully functioning. Our work continued unaffected as we worked from home - all we needed was internet access. It was fascinating to see how our boutique agency was able to move through the work week as our global client was locked out of work literally and figuratively for a week.
With this in mind, my team is planning for a potential interruption in NYC. We will be conducting mini 100% virtual trials during the month of March to make sure that the whole team is functioning well virtually. Work won't stop during these tests, and in fact our clients might not even realize when these tests are occurring. That's the whole point. With this system, we can support our workload while ensuring my team's safety. During this time we will confirm that all staff has the tools and supplies they require to do their job effectively, the teams will adopt daily routines to ensure that communication and workflow doesn’t lag, and they will come out of March knowing that we can be effective and efficient working from anywhere.
I'm happy to chat about our plans and offer any guidance to you if you are considering a virtual approach for your teams. Just reach out in the comments below.