Off Sick/Missing/Wanted by the police*
[*delete as appropriate]
This of course is a “Key personnel” issue, how could you or your business cope if an important member of your staff was, for some reason absent or just plain unavailable? People become “unavailable” for a variety of reasons sickness being probably the most common, anything from a heavy cold to a heart attack can cause even the most dependable team member to “cry off”.
But other reasons, often less dramatic but no less real abound; family crises, car breakdowns, strikes, volcanoes, Valerie from typing (okay, I’m pushing in the last point but if I asked you to fill your own in here, I’m sure you could!)
People being people (not machines) occasionally have to absent themselves from work and the question is, could you cope?
Of course timing is everything, a few weeks warning would be nice but often is not forthcoming. The call typically comes on a Friday afternoon, the key staff member who was organising the event/project/meeting on Monday is in hospital/detained (or whatever) somebody needs to step in quickly and fill his/her place.
So where do you start? Where had your key person got up to? Where is the paperwork, guest-list, Project documents, contact details or timetable. Please don’t say was all on his laptop! Or on the office file server! It’s weekend and the IT department are most definitely not around.
At this point the cloud based project management system would probably seem like a good idea. Projects can be organised around standard templates, so another team member who has to step in at short notice will see a familiar format and most importantly, all the project documentation will be immediately visible to him/her.
Accessible 24/7, 365 days a year, a little light reading over the weekend should bring your new project manager up to speed, and Mondays’ event or meeting can go ahead without a hiccup.
In fact, your clients and contacts will probably be all the more impressed, recognising that you had the infrastructure in place to overcome such difficulties.
Of course with a cloud-based system the infrastructure need not be yours at all, all you need is a PC with an Internet connection (also available at most modern coffee shops!), to connect to your own private portion of the cloud where your project documentation can be stored and retained safely.
We’ve often written in the past about physical disasters, fires, thefts or floods and how our cloud-based solutions can help you overcome them. But of course most businesses will have insurance to cover such events, personal disasters are in fact more common and as such it is necessary to create your own insurance.
If you’d like to learn more about sharing documents, managing projects and communicating with Collabor8Online, click or call the numbers below.