CRANSTON – Donald Nokes, president of NetCenergy LLC, a computer support and services company, says his company had a disaster-preparedness plan ready to handle the operational impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
In February, the company took preventative measures, stocking up on hand sanitizer and wipes, while having the office deep cleaned. On March 13, the entire operation went remote, with all of the staff working from home, which Nokes said has been disheartening due to the lack of social interaction with his team and his family.
Nokes said that Vice President of Operations and Finance Peter Lachapelle had the company prepared for a crisis, and “brought a sharper focus on that area when he joined us five years ago. Typically, the cause of a business interruption is related to equipment or connection failures and occasionally fires, floods or other disasters. While the business continuity plans we implemented and have partnered with our clients to assist them in creating, aren’t specifically expected to cover a pandemic, but the procedures to implement remote work, videoconferencing, etc. are similar regardless of the cause.”
“The real issue is the lack of social contact,” he said. “Video conferencing is extremely helpful, but I really miss the interaction with not only my colleagues and clients but with my family. We have three grandchildren who range in age from 10 months to 2-and-a-half years old and we miss being with them. We all have Facebook Portals, a Christmas present from my oldest son, so we talk to them multiple times each day. My wife uses the Portal to read stories to them, which is great, but it’s just not the same as reading to them on your lap.”
PBN is asking local business owners and CEOs five questions in a survey designed to understand how the new coronavirus has affected them and their businesses and what they have learned from the unprecedented challenges. Here are Nokes’ responses:
How are you coping amid the COVID-19 crisis?
At NetCenergy we consider our 35-employees as our extended family. So, their health and safety are our number one concern. Fortunately, due to the immediate response we implemented at the beginning of this outbreak, each member of our team is virus-free. Second to their physical health, is the reduction of stress regarding the consistency of their income. Every person on staff at the outset of this pandemic is still working the same hours and taking home the same income without interruption. We feel very fortunate that we can say this especially when so many of our neighbors and colleagues are not in that position. The major difference for us is that we had to implement our plan to move all of our employees out of our office and most are working from their homes. Only one person works at our Cranston office in order to receive equipment deliveries and mail. Only essential and emergency on-site services are being performed by our team today.
Have you found silver linings in these difficult times?
It’s difficult to find any silver linings when so many people are impacted so profoundly by this pandemic. I would say that during this time every single member of our organization has responded with incredible focus on making sure that our clients are able to rely on their technology to continue being as productive as possible. They no longer consider this an eight to five job. They are working whenever the customer needs it. No complaints, no fishing for compliments, the commitment level to do their job is extremely gratifying. We knew we had a great crew, but we are extremely proud of their response.
How are you maintaining your company culture?
The culture of our company is centered around servicing our clients. It is job number one and given the challenges that our clients are facing now, our team had doubled down and is communicating more with our clients and their co-workers than I’ve ever seen. We have excellent technical tools in place to make sure all of our work is tracked and fully documented but we have added daily Teams meetings with each and every employee to ensure regular personal contact.
Did your business-continuity plan work or were there surprises?
I would refer to them as adjustments versus surprises but as a security-focused organization, our business-continuity plan and the BCP’s we authored for our clients allowed us to transition from physical to virtual workplaces as planned. That doesn’t mean there weren’t some required tweaks. We added second or third monitors to some remote workers’ home offices, added laptops for employees who weren’t initially expected to require them. As a whole though, the transition went very smoothly.
Do you have advice for other local companies?
We are all very optimistic that the priority that was placed on limiting social contact will start to be evidenced by a drop in cases and fatalities and that we can start to resume normal operations. We are advising all businesses to plan for a gradual resumption of normal operations. Plan for ramping back up. Take a serious look at how you will maintain your Information Technology infrastructure going forward. Will you move more deliberately to cloud applications or perhaps bring some back in house. Are there more efficient ways to add additional security and on-going maintenance. This may be an ideal time to create a plan with your internal IT team or explore an outsourced option.
NetCenergy produced a short video displaying photos of their staff working from home, which can be found at: bit.ly/2XVRCXU.
Cassius Shuman is a PBN staff writer and researcher. He can be reached at shuman@pbn.com.
