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How The Cloud Can Help Businesses During Covid-19

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Times are unusual for everyone at the moment due to the Coronavirus across the globe. Businesses have had to take a fresh look at how they function and how they can best enable their employees to work from home to keep their business afloat.

Never have there been such testing times for the business world during the pandemic. Many have had to take swift action to keep systems in place, as well ensuring that they enable remote access to their employees.

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | How The Cloud Can Help Businesses During Covid-19

Covid-19 has highlighted the need for widespread adaptation, laying aside outdated, manual ways of working in favour of secure, internet-based tools, built to handle everything from your accounting and invoicing to meetings and quick chat options. All of this, and a lot more, is easy to set up in minutes, thanks to cloud computing for business.

Due to enforced social distancing and many offices having to close (or at least have reduced access). It’s been imperative that companies utilize the various online tools that are available, such as video calling.

This is where the cloud comes in as it means businesses can use the internet to store and get hold of data, instead of using their hard drives in the office, server or things like disc technology.

There are some key advantages to using the cloud for business:

It enables employees to work from home

If the cloud was already part of your business before Coronavirus, then it meant that you were one step ahead of those who didn’t. Many businesses were still very traditional in the fact that they operated from premises and were used to their employees reporting into the office. The pandemic really turned this style of workforce on its head.

Now employees have been helping to ensure businesses and their jobs are still there, by working from devices at home. Employees now need access to hardware such as laptops, mobile phones and desk phones which has created a huge demand for these items.

Security is a critical aspect of home working that is not as apparent to employees but of paramount importance to the organisation. Cyberattacks are on the rise and a big concern for businesses and other security professionals implementing work-from-home and cloud solutions.

IT efficiency

It can often be perceived that employees are not as productive at home, at least to their employers. However, this is not always the case. Many people are working to their best, perhaps more so, since working from home and it will often be facilitated by the infrastructure that the company has in place. This in turn makes it even more crucial that IT departments are working effectively to make sure that systems are running as smoothly as they can, plus, having a cloud service provider and is like having a specialist third party on-tap, as well as utilizing companies such as techsquared.com.

It gives your business resilience

In uncertain times, it’s having the tool to be able change that’s key. Due to rapid changes, that in some cases have had to happen overnight, having the ability to scale up and down has been paramount. By enabling employees to be able to perform their role from home, it really helps to make the business far more resilient and as a result, more likely to be less affected by the pandemic in the long run.

How employees’ mental health can be looked after during COVID-19

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | How employees' mental health can be looked after during COVID-19Currently, employers are facing the most crucial test in a generation as the COVID-19 pandemic presents a massive threat to the psychological wellbeing of their staff. Remote working, furloughing en masse, and sector-wide uncertainties all pose major challenges to maintaining the mental health of the workforce.

With so many factors at play, from dealing with isolation to financial or health concerns alongside familial and caring commitments, safeguarding employee mental wellbeing is not an easy task. However, there are several initiatives you can take to protect and build mental resilience in your workforce.

Keeping people connected

Good working relationships are critical to both performance and emotional wellbeing. With remote working, there is a very real danger that the physical distance between team members can lead to social and affinity distance. Work becomes more task-focused rather than collaborative and, without face-to-face contact, important friendships and support networks disappear. In this situation, it’s all too easy for employees to feel isolated and overwhelmed.

Encouraging regular communication through online and video meetings, as well as emails and instant messaging, creates opportunities for both collaborative working and socialisation. This helps to retain the human element to the business, mitigating feelings of isolation.

It is also important to check in regularly with staff to discuss performance, as well as their mental and physical health. Allowing them to raise issues and speak freely, means you can offer support if needed and be proactive about potential problems before they occur.

Balancing work and life commitments

Balancing personal and professional life is also important for protecting mental health. However, with remote working, it can be very difficult to manage. With work notifications popping up outside office hours, and the demands of childcare or other significant responsibilities, home and work commitments run the risk of getting tangled up, contributing to stress.

Helping employees set a clear line between work and personal priorities by building mental barriers is key. Employers should encourage their staff to set a designated area of work, where they won’t be interrupted. It’s also important to remind employees of setting a schedule. A daily routine, perhaps starting with a call with a manager or the team, can help give employees an idea of when to begin and finish work. Defining a start and end time ensures they know when it is OK to ‘switch off’, turn away from the screen, and save those emails for the next day.

Highlighting support options

In situations like these, it is paramount that employees are aware of the resources available to them, and that they are encouraged to take advantage of them. Employers should consider building a community page where employees can connect, and HR managers can share tips, such as effective stress management and maintaining work/life balance.

You can also point them towards vital support networks. These might range from company-provided employee assistance programs and counseling services to links to organisations that offer guidance and support. The NHS and MIND are excellent resources you should consider.

Providing helpful resources demonstrates you care, and communicating clearly and openly that employees should not be afraid to seek help if they need it, will help them sleep easier

Beware the media

The way in which we consume our news can also have an adverse effect on our mental wellbeing. Keeping up to date with COVID-19 coverage is tempting and thanks to social media, these stories are highly accessible. However, it’s very easy to get lost in a sea of misinformation and fear.

Though organisations can not directly influence how their workforce is consuming media, leaders can and should provide clarity and guidance to their staff, communicating clearly about the situation and what it means for the organisation.

With the government announcement that employees should continue to work from home where they can, it’s clear that for many, remote working and social distancing will be the ‘new normal’ for the foreseeable future, prolonging potential dangers to mental health.

Businesses depend on their people, and people need support. If an organisation is to survive and thrive, taking a proactive approach to employee wellbeing – both mental and physical – has to be at the heart of a successful business strategy.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Will JacobsWill Jacobs, a graduate of the London School of Economics, heads social media and authors content at Cezanne HR, a leading supplier of modern Cloud HR and payroll software.

COVID-19 Has Revealed What We Need More of in Business: The Female Brain

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StrategyDriven Diversity and Inclusion Article | COVID-19 Has Revealed What We Need More of in Business: The Female BrainThe coronavirus crisis is a wake-up call. It’s waking us up to what we need to pay attention to in order to live sustainable, healthy lives on this planet. It’s waking us up to the global leadership and cooperation that’s required to ensure our human survival. And it’s highlighting how the female brain is highly adapted to the actions that are needed — right now.

Across the globe, we’re witnessing shining examples of women leading nations through this crisis (here’s to you, Germany and New Zealand) and instances of the worst kind of dominant male behavior here in the USA.

Women, men, and the balance of power

In each of these cases, women have expressed their power differently than men. But why? Differences in neural connectivity and hormones combine to shape male and female power behaviors. Modern brain scanning reveals that neural connectivity in a female brain activates broadly across the left and right hemispheres as the brain analyzes the many facets of a problem. In contrast, male brain connectivity runs with equal intensity from front to back, focused inside of each hemisphere, but with little connection between the two sides of the brain, giving men a singular focus.

Neurochemically, women’s brains and bodies contain far greater quantities of oxytocin, the bonding hormone. For men, the quantities of testosterone are far higher. Under stress, men’s testosterone levels go up, and oxytocin goes down. In women, it’s the opposite; the stress response increases oxytocin.

Because of these combinations, women and men tend to have different takes on the world. Put simply: women create solutions; men fix problems. Women, by nature, are more inclined to connect, collaborate, and communicate. Men with higher testosterone tend to care more about their place in the pecking order.

To be clear, none of these responses are fully married to either sex. How we respond and react are unique to us, with our life experiences shaping these basic biological underpinnings. But we all know that women and men generally have very different ways of living in the world, based on millions of years of evolution. And, as we are experiencing with COVID-19, you cannot argue with Mother Nature.

Right now, a broad, collaborative, and connected perspective—one that sees the whole and isn’t about competition, ego, and turf wars — is exactly what’s required.

Our ‘new normal’ requires female ways of leading

Research shows that many pre-COVID-19 corporate cultures favored male-oriented brains, having been largely created by certain kinds of men for similar kinds of men. But in this new world of working remotely, female ways of leading are creating the space for neural diversity to speak up and find its voice.

Women who were often silent in big office meetings are speaking up online. So are the less-alpha men, along with introverts. Power and status symbols have been stripped away. Working from home is a great leveler and liberator, and it’s allowed female leadership to access the best of all the brains in the business.

COVID-19 has caused us to hit the pause button. To stop and think. Just like the impact of women coming into the workforce after World War II, we are experiencing the positive effects of a different kind of leadership at work. These coronavirus days are allowing female power to shine. There will be no going back, and the world will be better for it.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Kate LanzKate Lanz is the founder and CEO of Mindbridge, a UK-based global leadership company specializing in the power of modern neuroscience and releasing latent brain potential. She is the author of All the Brains in the Business: The Engendered Brain in the 21st Century Organisation. Learn more at mindbridge.co.uk.