Unexpected events highlight the importance of establishing and keeping open lines of communication within an organisation.  The spread of COVID-19 has meant businesses have needed to adapt quickly to a developing situation. With the UK in lockdown, all but essential employees are now working remotely, and offices are remaining shut until further notice.

More employees are working from home than ever including many for the first time, which means sharing an announcement isn’t as easy as just gathering everyone in the office. It’s important to find new ways to communicate with your employees when needing to share information, providing them with the ability to stay in touch and with up-to-date health information from reputable sources

COVID-19 creates an increased risk of absence due to illness; it is, therefore, essential that businesses can accurately predict, track, react and allocate resources to cover business demand.

At Cloud Direct we’re working to do our part by ensuring the safety of our employees, striving to protect their health and well-being and providing technology, tips and resources to ensure everyone stays briefed on the situation and any likely business impacts. That’s why we have deployed the Microsoft Crisis Communication application. Now we want to show how you can use it too.

What is the Crisis Communication App?
Microsoft has released a Crisis Communication Application to help businesses cope with the current situation. You can see how many employees across your business are off sick and allocate resources accordingly to cover any absent staff.

Key features of the Crisis Communications Application
Key features of the Crisis Communication Application are as follows:

• Employees can report on their status. Employees will have the ability to report on their status and set out of office responses so you can have a clear view on who is working from home, working in the office, off sick, annual leave or self-isolating. This will allow you to track and coordinate your resources accordingly. You’ll also be able to keep ontop of everyone
• Push news and business updates to employees. Push any company news and updates to all employees, keeping them updated with the latest information.
• Share trusted sources with the business. Share an RSS feed from reputable sources such as the World Health Organisation (WHO). This way you can point your employees to trusted sources rather than getting muddled amongst COVID-19 myths and rumours.
• Share FAQs. Businesses are getting lots of questions daily and new updates are made available. You can upload any common questions you’ve been getting in this section and start directing employees to the FAQs section. You can also share links to the relevant policies e.g. home working or expenses.
• Send a message to a Teams channel. Users can submit questions to a monitored teams channel, allowing your HR teams to respond and direct any questions to relevant resources.

How we’ve been using the application

Cloud Direct has been using the Crisis Communication Application for a few weeks now and has been reaping benefits – helping the company better communicate with everyone working remotely.
Better tracking
With employees based across the UK, Europe and South Africa, keeping track of all staff can be challenging. Since rolling out the application we have been able to better track who is working and where they are working from. Allowing us to ensure resources are spread if someone is off ill. Plus, by tracking who is self-isolating, you will be able to claim their wages back.
Updating staff immediately
Within the application, we can push notifications immediately to all staff with any update or business news. This is a great way to share any updates you have on changes within the business or any urgent COVID-19 information worth sharing with employees.

How we can help
Our experts are ready to share the application with businesses to help them communicate better during this challenging period. We’re offering a free 20-minute demo and Q&A session to help you roll out the Crisis Communication Application within your organisation. Claim your free demo below.

If you have any questions on the Crisis Communication Application, home working or any other business challenges or would like further support during this time, please get in contact with us. Our experts are here to support you where they can during this period.