5 Tips for Keeping Your Business Going During the Coronavirus Outbreak

A crisis doesn’t have to be the end

Unless you live in a bubble (which doesn’t sound like a terrible idea right now), you’ve probably heard of or been affected in some way by the coronavirus disease, a.k.a COVID-19. With many people panicking about the spread, businesses are seeing a harsh decline in traffic and an increase in isolation.

So.. what’s a business to do? Panic? Nah. Plan? Yes.

To protect your business and employees in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, you need to be willing to take some precautionary measures … and of course plenty of handwashing in the process.

Here are some tips, tools, and best practices that have helped us here at Multi.io, and hopefully they can help you too.

1 — Establish A Work From Home Policy, If Possible

If you don’t have a work from home policy or plan, now is the best time to add one, my dear Multiguanas. With coronavirus running wild throughout the globe, businesses are finding alternative work arrangements to keep employees from coming into the office and avoiding contact. Thus, if at all possible, consider establishing a work from home policy. Include things like employee eligibility, remote procedures, and guidelines (I’ll run through a few of ours below shortly).

As for Multi, like many companies headquartered in affected areas around the world, we are now transitioning our operations to accommodate a fully distributed workforce. Luckily, however, this is nothing new for us. Multi was built from day one to operate as a remote-first company. For the past year we have operated teams across three continents and five time zones, including a group of fully remote workers.

Work from home.

2 — Create a Virtual Office

Communication is key. To keep your team on the same page, you need to be in the same room, virtually. At Multi we use Slack to stay motivated and productive, wherever we are.

We have an array of channels set up, from a #general chat for team announcements and to get important information to everyone at once, to a #cryptomeme channel to keep spirits high.

We celebrate product updates and milestones, as well as welcoming new members. We use 50+ dedicated channels for each department or project to keep our work flowing. Additionally, there’s a direct chat between team members that basically replaces internal emails.

Oh, and not to forget, within Slack itself we have also embedded our dearly beloved geekbot which reminds employees of certain tasks or duties throughout the day, as well as requesting manual updates from the team members themselves. We couldn’t recommend it any more!

Geekbot is here. Every day. You will never be alone again.

3 — Host Video Meetings

Beyond messaging each other on Slack, we find it is valuable to host a handful of regular virtual face-to-face team meetings with voice and video.

For example, At Muti we host daily departmental and weekly company meetings. Each Monday we lay out the entire week for the whole company. A Gantt chart is used for the entire team, not only the tech/development side. This is the only time we request employees to work off-hours, such as Sunday night in the US.

Screen-sharing is particularly useful when reviewing metrics and designs. Despite not being in the same room, we’re able to drive transparency and alignment on our company’s mission and vision.

Statistically, 40% of these people don’t wear pants.

We should also mention that in order to be effective, remote meetings require proper homework and planning in advance; for example, creating and sending an agenda ahead of time is key. Pro tip: Kick off the meeting with 1–2 minutes of ice-breaking water-cooler chat to build productive relationships.

4 — Project Management and Collaboration

Take your workflows online. We recently transitioned from Trello and Monday to Notion to merge Kanban boards with task management tables. Additionally, consider using time tracking apps such as Hubstaff and Timeneye. This enforces employees to recap their days as well as allowing for your business to analyze the progress and productivity of certain projects and/or tasks.

With regards to collaboration, we think it’s crucial for there to be fixed time allocations where certain departments can stay in sync, i.e. evening US West Coast with morning Asia Pacific, so as to allow for task optimization.

Moving Kanban cards from left to right is great.

5 — Maximize your Downtime

Being that you may be stuck at home for an extended period of time we think it’s vital that you make sure you distance your work life from your downtime. Pick up some books, try that new 40,000 piece Disney puzzle, or give yoga a go. Never underestimate the value of having that “me time.”

Want to know why your free time is so important? Need some inspiration or ideas? We have just the article: Link