Do you have a back-up plan?
I recently had a hiking accident which put me off work for a week and has me working from home for awhile. While I cannot say that the transition has been made with complete ease, I will say that it could be a lot worse. I credit this to the fact that Red Sage has a back-up plan.
While you hope to never have an emergency like this come up, life happens. I think it is important to plan for incidents like this. And while I think it is incredibly important to have a logistics plan that includes the ability to work remotely, etc., like Red Sage does, in this post I am only talking about what you do to keep projects moving when the person in charge of them is out of commission.
Talk Early, Talk Often
We have a weekly staff meeting at Red Sage. We also use project management software to give updates or “chatter” about all of our projects. While this is certainly not enough to keep everyone fully up-to-date on projects going on, it is a starting point.
No Secrets
There is always at least one person at Red Sage who can access the email of everyone on staff. She rarely does, because she has projects and work to keep her busy, but in the event that someone is out of the office, and cannot be reached to get his/her email password, the staff can have access to it. I recommend you keep a record not just of email passwords, but computer passwords, phone passwords, etc.
Social Media is About Sharing
It is no secret that I handle the majority of Red Sage’s social media efforts. So if you were paying attention, you may have noticed there was a decline in the number of posts the week I was completely off work. But that is an important distinction here: there was a decline in the number of posts, not an elimination of posts.
When it comes to social media (and all marketing efforts in general), I recommend that you never operate entirely in a silo. If you are not comfortable with giving full responsibility and permissions to multiple people, you can still give some posting rights to multiple team members. It is always best to have one person primarily responsible so that there is not duplication of posts, etc., but you do not want only one person being able to access your social media networks.
Remote Access
Okay, I went there anyway. I just could not help myself. While I think what we have set up is close to ideal (server access, e-mail access, account access, etc.), remote access can start small and progress. Start with making some of your documents available on the Cloud or having the ability to check e-mail over the Internet and just not Outlook (or similar software). Want employees to have access to it everywhere they go? Provide them with a company smart phone. It might not give employees everything they need – or you, either, for that matter – but it is a starting point.