The barriers to success have always been high, and they are getting higher. Competition, regulation and other predictable challenges make business tough enough, but at least they affect all companies equally. What can really bring an organisation to its knees are the unpredictable and highly selective ‘acts of God and man’ – floods, pandemics, terrorist attacks and the like – that have the potential to cripple a business while leaving its competitors unscathed.
The real issue is not simply an increasingly threatening external environment. Rather, it’s the combination of external threats and the potential fragility of some modern business systems.
Both efficiency and customer focus – essentials in modern business – are highly dependent on the uninterrupted availability of computing and communications systems. If your servers are down because of flooding, or key IT and call centre staff cannot make it to work because of strikes or ‘leaves on the line’, your business may simply cease to function. This is transparently bad for your business, and highly frustrating for your staff.
Promoting corporate resilience
Fortunately, a recent study undertaken in association with Ragnar Lofstedt – professor of risk management at King’s College, London – has highlighted the importance of the ‘Bulldog spirit’ among British employees in promoting corporate resilience. 61% of staff questioned said it was their responsibility to help ensure systems and procedures were up-and-running again if a disaster struck.
So what can be done? The obvious answer is ‘be prepared’. Think about what can go wrong and how your business might respond. As market analyst Gartner observes: “Every enterprise should have a minimal plan in place to protect business operations in the event of reasonably anticipated threats”.
Less obviously, but crucially, you also need to adopt flexible working practices – not just because employees increasingly expect them, but because they make your business much more resilient to disruptive events, both large and small.
The key concept here is flexibility. As any wrestler will tell you, if you tense your muscles and lock your joints, you’re much easier to push over than if you adopt a more flexible posture. It’s the same in business. If your business systems require people to be in specific places to do specific things, they’ll not be able to function when those places are unavailable or inaccessible.
The good news is that, just as information and communications technology is often credited with the ‘death of distance’ so, properly deployed, can it end the ‘primacy of place’ – the crucial impediment to flexible working.
Toolkit for flexible working
The toolkit of flexible working technologies includes three basic components. First, secure remote access to company systems, such that staff can continue to work. Second, access to office phone lines so that staff may continue to receive their calls. Conferencing is also importat so that people can continue to meet. Let’s look at each of these areas in turn.
Contrary to popular myth, accessing corporate networks from outside the office doesn’t have to mean an increased threat to key systems and data. Provided users are properly authenticated and encryption is used to prevent eavesdropping, security isn’t an issue.
In practice, well-established networking protocols with the ability to address both requirements are readily available. Using them, staff can access the IT systems they need to do their jobs not just when they are in a company office, but from a host of other locations – homes, hotels, temporary offices and so on.
Those IT systems – and the networks that connect them -must themselves be resilient. If the applications and databases employees need exist only on computers in buildings affected by problems that have forced them to find other places to work, the option to connect remotely could be of very limited use. This factor alone is a significant reason for businesses to consider outsourcing the operation of networks and data centres. Those offering such services commercially typically build-in much greater levels of resilience.
IP telephony: flexible and resilient solution
Much the same applies when it comes to maintaining access to phone services. Here, IP telephony is the most flexible and resilient solution. The big difference between IP telephony and the ‘plain old telephone service’ we’re used to is that calls are no longer carried, point-to-point, in an unbroken stream along the equivalent of fixed wires. Instead, telephone conversations are ‘bundled up’ into packets and shipped across the Internet much like packets of data.
The bundling is done by a computer, equipped with a microphone, speakers and the necessary software, or by IP phones (which implement the same functions in a handset resembling a conventional phone).
The significance of IP telephony for flexible working is that it ends the fixed relationship between a line and a phone number. Instead, users can make any phone their own simply by logging in. And they can do this from any location that offers an IP connection to the corporate network – another office within the corporate headquarters, regional offices, wireless hotspots or even employees’ homes.
Suppose a fire closes your head office, or a major motorway accident prevents key staff driving to work – with IP telephony you can still be in business. Staff forced to work from home or go to another office will still be able to make and receive calls as if they were at their own desks.
Audio, web and video conferencing
Finally, although generally marketed as a means of saving on the cost of business travel, audio, web and video conferencing really come into their own when a disaster makes travel very much more difficult. The classic examples are post-9/11, when US civil flights were suspended, and after the 7/7 attacks in London, which left many uncomfortable about using the Underground system.
As for IT systems, organisations should give very careful consideration to using services hosted on an operator’s network rather than in their own premises. As a rule, network operators design their infrastructure to deliver very high levels of availability and, increasingly, are factoring in the likelihood of potential disasters when deciding where to locate new installations.
Recent events demonstrate the wisdom of such an approach. In July 2007, following days of abnormally high rainfall, it took the heroic efforts of 150 workers to prevent the inundation of Gloucestershire’s main electricity sub-station at Waltham – precariously located within the flood plain of the River Severn. On that occasion, the threatened total blackout of the county was averted. Next time, they and the businesses that depend on the sub-station’s supplies may not be so fortunate.
Flexible working isn’t just about anticipating disasters. It’s also an excellent approach to business management in its own right, helping to create leaner, fitter and more responsive organisations. Hot desking – which IP telephony makes very much easier to implement – reduces the demand for office space, the freedom to work from home can improve worker satisfaction and conferencing can reduce business travel budgets by millions of pounds.
Flexible working: the BT experience
In BT, the majority of our 110,000 employees are now equipped to work flexibly, and do so as a matter of routine. This in itself is important: familiar with the technologies and services they need to connect from an array of different locations, they aren’t phased at all if they cannot make it to a particular location.
Contrast this with the recent experience of the editorial team at Director, the Institute of Director’s magazine. Working on a special issue on flexible working, they decided to put it to the test. Unfamiliar with both the technical and cultural issues involved, they found it far from easy.
The message here is clear. Like any other business continuity strategy, it’s important that flexible working is well-rehearsed. A sudden – and likely wholesale – change to an unfamiliar way of working will create problems all of its own.
Flexible working isn’t just about mastery of a specific set of technologies. For it to work well, a wide range of factors must be addressed – supply chain management and Health and Safety compliance, for example – and its introduction often needs to be accompanied by a thorough, top-to-bottom programme of cultural change.
Technical and human factors of security
Organisations must also ensure they have addressed both the technical and human factors of security. Flexible workers may need to carry valuable corporate data with them, and this obviously needs to be protected against theft and accidental loss. Staff need not just to be told but to understand what they need to do to protect their business and its assets.
Power-up password checking should be employed, measures like encryption implemented and, depending on what’s involved, the ability to remotely ‘kill’ lost devices might also need to be considered. Either flexible working solutions are secure or they shouldn’t be deployed at all.
Set out like this the challenges may sound daunting, but don’t be dissuaded. Across the world, enterprises large and small have demonstrated that flexible working is both good for business as usual and an excellent form of disaster insurance. As a strategy for business management, it’s a true win-win option. No organisation can afford to ignore it.
Bharat Thakrar is head of business continuity at BT Global Services
Flexible working: the financial benefits
– The majority of BT’s 110,000 employees are equipped to work flexibly. Around 11,000 work from home.
– BT’s home workers avoid an average 4.4 hours of commuting a week, take 63% less sick leave than their office-based colleagues and are, on average, 20% more productive.
– Home working is one of the options that allows 97% of BT’s UK-based female employees to return to work after maternity leave – substantially more than the UK average of 47%.
– The reduced need for office accommodation saves BT around GB pound 60 million a year.
– Independent researchers found that BT’s use of conferencing services eliminated some 860,000 face-to-face meetings in 2006-2007, cutting travel costs by GB pound 130 million and freeing time worth GB pound 100 million for more productive use.
BT Global Services will be exhibiting at Infosecurity Europe 2009 – Europe’s leading event dedicated to information security. Now in its 14th year, the show continues to provide an unrivalled education programme, the most diverse range of new products and services from over 300 exhibitors and attracts circa 12,000 visitors from every segment of the industry.
Running from 28-30 April at London’s Earls Court, the show is something of a ‘must attend’ event for all professionals involved in the information security space. See our dedicated link on the right hand panel of this page for more details.
