The entire EPX team have been remote working since the middle of March – around a week prior to the government announcement. Like many other businesses we had a short transition period where we worked around the clock to ensure everyone had the tools needed to work from home effectively. New webcams and headsets were purchased and many of the team took monitors home to facilitate multi-screen setups.
Internal Response to COVID-19
We are more than familiar with the theory of remote working and have helped to facilitate this for many of our clients in the past and present, but in practise it is quite alien to us at EPX. We are fond of our working environment and the office camaraderie and having to leave this behind has been hard.
A huge amount of what we do is knowledge sharing and it is vital this continues. Three times a day we hold a short meeting to check in with each other and use this platform to share our insights.
Aside from our working hours we are also hosting numerous socials, we’ve held a pub quiz, “coffee mornings” and after-work drinks, and of course are open to any new suggestions – the more the fun the better!
The team has adapted incredibly well, and we appreciate this is a difficult time for us all. With that in mind, we have invested in an anonymous counselling service and this is available to all our colleagues.
External Response to COVID-19
Aside from where we are working, at EPX it is very much ‘business as usual’ for us and our clients. Day-to-day support continues to run as normal via phone and remote access and we actively encourage regular contact. We have been video - conferencing with some our clients for many years already (mainly due to geographic restrictions) and are pleased to see that our more local customers are happily adopting this method of communication too.
Part of our service usually includes on-site visits however for now these have all been suspended unless urgent. Prior to lockdown, we carried out our visits out-of-hours to minimise contact and protect the safety of our team and clients.
Our customers continue to be our priority and the service we deliver to them is of up most importance to ensure their businesses can continue to function effectively.
Looking Ahead
What this has highlighted, is areas for improvement. We have plenty of ‘temporary’ remote working measures available and recognise that more permanent solutions need to be sourced for the long term. The cyber security landscape has shifted massively, now everyone is working remotely, we need to consider thousands of users all on home broadband lines sharing networks with home PCs which can be a huge risk.
EPX have a “cloud migration path” to take all customers on, decommissioning their servers and moving telephones and computers to modern, futureproof solutions. This is not an overnight process and is an investment that will improve the longevity of a business.
We are in entirely unprecedented times and we are all going through these motions together. No one has all the answers and that is why supporting one another is more important than ever. Our IT experts know their stuff and will never cut corners, they love IT and have their fingers on the pulse at all times.
