The novel coronavirusthat first appeared in China is causing havoc across the globe. This could probably go down in the modern history of mankind as the biggest crisis after the world war 2. According to the WHO reports, the total number of confirmed cases worldwide as of 20, April, 2020 is 23,14,621 out of which the USA alone accounts for 7,23,605cases and the total number of deaths across the globe is 1,57,847. The coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world from multiple fronts- commonpeople lives,investors and business community.

As governments across the world are doing enough to effectively combat and control the virus spread and save the people lives, let us look examine about what businesses can do to survive and move forward in this global pandemiccrisis.

Ensuring Safety of Employees– Should be the First Priority

The first and foremost priority of any organization during the times of pandemics of this kind should be the safety of its workforce. Ensuring safety of employees is crucial for businesses as employees cannot focus fully on the work responsibilities when the lives of their family membersare at risk. Hence, it is imperative for organizations to provide a safe workplace to their employees by allowing them to work from homeand offer them other support they need during the critical times. Some of the examples of employee support include, pandemic related training,family healthcare andtransport facilities, etc.

Remote Working – The Best Option Available

Though remote working is not possible for every enterprise it is certainly the best optionavailable.Unlike the conventional business disruptionswhose span is generally shorter, the time span of these kind of pandemics is unknown. It all depends on intensity of the situation which varies with geographies. Itrequireshigh degree of coordination not just between the employee and employer, but among all the stakeholders in the society- governments, health officials, law enforcement departments, etc.  So, business should make necessary arrangements in terms of providing them with required IT infrastructure to help employees work remotely and collaborate virtuallywith various stakeholders.

Reconsidering Reliance on Third-parties

Today, almost every company depends on third parties in the delivery of products and services to the end customers. Like every other business entitythese third parties, be it cloud service providers, data processors, aggregator or system integrators, are also vulnerable to pandemics. So, businesses which depend on the third parties should assess their reliance programs and devise alternative strategies to ensure seamless business operations.

In the post-corona era, the world will witness massive changes not merely in terms the way people live but also in terms of the way they work and engage with each other, and ‘Work from Home’ would certainly emerge as the most prominent oneamong many other changes. “We are witnessing a fundamental change in the role of boards and business continuity — the ability to work from any location will be the audit committee topic of 2020.  Just like data security audits and assessments, 2020 will be about assessing readiness and resilience in the way that businesses ensure continuity during a contingency period, without any impact such as hurting productivity or engagement,”says VikramVerma, CEO of 8x8 Inc. Considering therelevance of remote working, every business should give a though to let their employees work from home by improving the remote working capabilities and policies.