Yesterday, Gaia Resources trialled our Business Continuity Plan (developed under our recent ISO accreditation), by having all our staff in three cities work from home as a way of testing our equipment, procedures and communications we will need to work entirely remotely if that becomes necessary.

We hope that we won’t have to enact this “for real” (Editor note: even as we prepare to publish this, it it looks we may have to). At the moment, much of the advice is to ‘be alert not alarmed’, and we are preparing as best we can to support our people, our projects and our clients in this situation. We believe that the approach we outline does just that, and we will be monitoring the situation and adjusting our approach to suit.

We ran this test to see what transpired when we worked collectively offsite. It’s already something we do sporadically for the challenges that get thrown at you in life. Our team meeting was a chance to get all thirty staff together from their home offices, test work functionality, and meet the pets of Gaia Resources. Here’s a pictorial summary!

Our early observations show us that there were a few negatives: it doesn’t suit everyone, and there is certainly a downside to productivity in some cases. But it also gave us some benefits: no commute time, we all got to spend more time with our families and pets, and helping in a small way to reduce the spread of the virus, ideally. It also helped us to develop our abilities in ‘Chat’ and other communication methods.

While we wait to see what the next stage of COVID-19 will bring, we’re already trying to be proactive. Some of our team, or their families, have conditions that make them more susceptible to the virus and so are already staying away from the office and working from home. We’ll be debriefing today on how our ‘working from home day’ went and making some decisions about how we go forward. But for our clients, it’ll be business as usual, but with a reduction in face-to-face meetings.

If you have any queries about how Gaia Resources can help you during these difficult times let me know via email or via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Piers