As the recent winter snow brought the UK and most of western Europe to its knees (or backside, as you can see here), with many getting days off work and school, working life for Applied Language continued (almost) as normal.
I flout the law and the law won - a Policeman sledges on his riotshield!
With our head office situated in Delph (Saddleworth), our staff live either side of the Pennines and make their daily commute from Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Greater Manchester – so it was inevitable theat we would be snowed out of our ‘home’ following the adverse weather.
Couple that with the hazardous driving conditions that go with it, and we’d never want, or ask our staff to even try to make it in on the worst days. Instead we ask them to stay at home – for good reason, I add…
Deserted. One of the main roads into Manchester city centre!
Having taken the approach to equip all UK and US ALS staff with laptops a few years ago (which they take home with them every night), business continuity need never be a major issue.
Our in-house systems are developed as web applications – secure and globally available, as is email, while all phones are VOIP (or Skype!). So, our people have their workstations in their laptop bags – with them at all times.
ALS staff can can therefore work from home if needed – particularly in the blizzard-like conditions we’ve seen of late. Whenever our people do wake up to find themselves snowed in, it’s not the end of the world – or the working day.
The CBI has said the chaos caused by the weather could create a £14bn hole in the economy through lost trade and missed wages.
Amidst a stalling economic recovery, this only serves to worsen the situation for businesses already hit hard by the global recession.
In using technology the way we have, we’ve equipped ourselves to compete in ways our competitors simply can’t (or haven’t – yet). This has helped, albeit for only a couple of weeks, to sustain our own growth as we begin 2010.
The fact that our employees may be answering their early morning emails from their bedside tables, or conducting conference calls while still in their housecoats is absolutely irrelevant – our customers can enjoy the same excellent service they have always received from us, happy that another supplier hasn’t gone AWOL.
The great thing about that in a translation company? Most translators and remote interpreters work from home anyway – so there is a very minimal level of disruption.
So, amidst the chaos that this winter would always bring to the UK, and to quote Gareth Gower, our Development Manager, please look elsewhere for drama, at Applied Language we’ll be busy working – as usual.