COVID-19: Business Continuity for Thrive Customers

We are still here to help.

With the world’s attention on the COVID-19 outbreak, each day brings more uncertainty for businesses and our communities. We are continuing to monitor the developments of the outbreak and are taking the appropriate steps to support the ongoing health and safety of our employees, their families, our customers, and the surrounding communities.

At Thrive, the health and well-being of our employees and customers comes first.

As such, we wanted to inform you that effective from yesterday, Tuesday 17th March, we have implemented our business continuity plan and all Thrive employees are working from home effectively. 

We are practicing social distancing to protect all the members of the Thrive team as well as supporting efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19.

What does this mean for you? We are here to assist you to ensure your business can continue to operate without disruption and continue to provide the best way to connect and share information with your employees, no matter where they are in the world.

We are still at the end of our emails, phones and video conferencing tools and are happy to help.

We are committed to supporting you and your employees

We are here to help your business continue to operate without interruption – the steps we are continuing to take are listed as follows;

  • Support as normal. Please email support@thrive.app  we're not expecting the outbreak to have any impact on availability of support and have measures in place should a team member become ill. 
  • Our Hosting Provider, Rackspace UK, has activated their emergency response process involving remote working practices to ensure there is no impact to the system availability whilst protecting the health and safety of their staff. They have also increased their levels of spares and supplies and have designated secondary suppliers to ensure continuity of service during a long term event.

How can communication create certainty during social distancing?

Normally in a crisis we get physically closer to each other. We want to connect and come together for social support and reassurance, but unfortunately to avoid the spread of Coronavirus we have to do the exact opposite, which goes against how we normally engage during times of stress and uncertainty.

What can we do?

Frequent communication is now even more important to stay connected and engaged with your colleagues.

We need to support each other and communicate virtually to increase certainty and social connections.

We have seen many of our clients make great use of the Thrive platform and employee communications apps to help drive certainty through communication and thought we would share some best practices;

  • Communicate often and well – providing timely, accurate information and clear instructions.
  • Share advice, policies and protocols your organisation is taking to ensure the well-being of all employees.
  • Issue FAQ guides and link to authorities such as The World Health Organization (WHO)
  • Increase certainty by helping employees focus on what we can control and what we want to work towards.
  • Bring people together virtually – set a regular date and time for colleagues to be together online – even just for social support that’s needed.
  • Make going virtual a positive thing – give people the options to work where they need to so that they can spend time with family members if needed, give them the option to work in the evenings and change their working patterns if needed. The important thing is to give people a choice of different ways they can work, as long as they fit within your business needs.
  • Decide on shared goals together, set goals and a pathway for your teams to focus on for the next few months, this will increase certainty and focuses on what needs to be done.
  • Encourage video meetings.
  • Provide clarity on what’s expected from each team member and encourage feedback and ideas at all times.
  • Promote safety tips and preventive actions recommended by WHO and CDC.
  • Promote tips for overall well-being and to aid the immune system (sleep, exercise, meditation etc.)
  • Keep messages and information personal and genuine and try to remain positive and calm.

Summary

Although social distancing and working from home has been a forced decision for many companies due to the Coronavirus. The overall effects of working from home can become positive as long as we ensure social distancing doesn’t become a way of disconnecting. According to the State of Remote Work 2019 report by Owl Labs

79% of employees said they increased productivity and focus, 78% avoided a long commute and saved money. Other reports suggest that working from home helps to boost innovation with employees being able to produce ideas when they are more isolated with dedicated quiet time.

As Henry Kissinger once said “a diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure.”

Useful links to COVID-19 Resources

To help mitigate the risk the COVID-19 outbreak may pose to your business, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) are closely monitoring the situation and providing guidance and resources, including:

WHO Resources:

CDC Resources:

Region-Specific Resources:

Let’s help your company and your teams Thrive through this.