Datacom has enacted our core Business Continuity Plans (BCP) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and currently we have no reported cases of staff with the virus.
Datacom’s BCP call for staff to work remotely and we began testing and enacting this plan some time ago. Since Monday 23 March, more than 75% of our global workforce have been working from home. Those who remain in the office are in roles where they are required to be onsite and are considered essential services — data centres, customer service teams or our field services on customer sites.
Connect
For our Connect operation in Australia we have enacted a policy of physical distancing to ensure staff have plenty of room to move around without physically being close to each other. We have also increased our cleaning regime and continue to bring in additional safety measures to protect our people. For the longer term, we are looking at remote capability for these staff, where privacy and security rules allow.
Helping our customers work remotely
Our people continue to support all customers during these extraordinary times and are happy to help should you need any support with business continuity. We can now extend our Microsoft Teams environment to give customers external access should we need to ‘meet’ and our cyber-security team are hard at work ensuring customers are doing the right thing in regards to remote access and working in a secure environment.
We also recognise that not all work can be completed remotely and the need for our people to visit or work at customer sites continues. Currently we are making decisions around onsite working on a case-by-case basis with the expectation that our people will be safe at customer sites with pandemic appropriate health and safety precautions in place.
Data Centres
The data centre operations team and are considered essential services and have increased precautions around facility access to only allow essential activity. These practical measures have been sent to the people who manage customer access approvals for our data centre facilities and are intended to minimise the potential for disruption. We appreciate your understanding around this.
Supply Chain
Within the technology supply chain there are changes being notified by suppliers around price increases associated with exchange rate fluctuations and shipping costs. As always we will work in your best interests to minimise the impact of these changes on current and future orders.
While this is a difficult time for all of us, the team at Datacom is dedicated to keeping the lights on for our customers. We are an essential provider to many of the economy’s key functions, from central banking and payroll through to customer support and cloud services. This unprecedented situation throws up many challenges that our customers face day to day which require creative solutions. As we work through the challenges together, stay in touch and please don’t hesitate to ask us for help so that together we can return to business as usual in the near future.
Stay safe.