WARWICK – Gary Harlam, owner of Technology Advisory Group, a technology advisory company that has continued to operate throughout the pandemic, said a silver lining in these times has been his employees banding together to work in an efficient manner, even while working remotely. Since the company is a technology business, it had the equipment in place to transition to the new normal.
“When the situation warranted, we made the decision to send most everyone home to work, it was pretty seamless,” said Harlam. “Some people took their computers home. Fortunately, our desk phones work in the office and from remote locations, so we never lost touch with each other or our clients.”
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“I am a bit surprised that most of our employees still want to work at home and don’t want to come back to the office,” he said. “When we asked them up front, the expectation is that they wanted to get back here sooner. Clearly, it’s not safe to have everyone here at the same time; we would run the risk of everyone getting sick at the same time.”
“Every day, when I hear stories about those that don’t believe that COVID-19 is real and don’t believe that protection is warranted, I’m blown away,” said Harlam. “How can these people not acknowledge that 175,000 deaths are real losses? How can they not see that many businesses can’t afford to stay open while we protect ourselves?”
“From the beginning, I’ve been impressed with the way our governor has kept everyone informed and made the tough decisions,” said Harlam. “I am, however, very disappointed with the leadership, or lack thereof, in Washington.”
PBN is asking local business owners 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 Harlam’s responses:
How are you coping amid the COVID-19 crisis?
The situation with COVID-19 has presented a number of issues to be dealt with. Human resources issues regarding keeping our employees safe, while at the same time providing extremely valuable and timely services to our customers to keep them productive. Financial issues related to the uncertainties arise every day. Consulting with our clients to help them determine how to work in these circumstances when many of them did not anticipate a crisis such as this for their business. We are the IT Department for many companies, and it is our job to help them navigate how to use new technologies to help them stay functional. Many people are learning new technical ways to provide services or products to their customers. We are all learning in real time how to run our businesses in an extremely different way.
Have you found silver linings in these difficult times?
Yes, the fact that technology can provide a way to stay functional and productive, even under these extreme circumstances. If the COVID-19 pandemic hit us say 30 years ago, none of the ways people are working today would be possible. We are fortunate to be in the business of helping people learn and utilize these new technologies.
How are you maintaining your company culture?
It would probably be inaccurate to say that things are normal. We are all struggling to understand this new life and how to react and stay calm. We do use collaboration tools, which only recently were released; things like Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other online collaboration tools. We have daily meetings and real time communication with each other to stay connected. We also all try to be understanding of the stresses associated with this, so we try to make meetings more fun and not just get down to business.
Did your business continuity plan work or were there surprises?
Yes, for the most part, our business continuity plan has been in place for years and we got several dry runs during winter storms, power outages and other similar events. This one is just longer in duration, which did present a different set of circumstances. Continuous adjustment is required to keep things on track.
Do you have advice for other local companies?
I think all companies need to access the types of events that could come at them and make sure they think about what it would look like and what it means to their business. Continuous innovation will likely be the norm going forward. This is likely not the last pandemic that a business owner will face in their lifetime. They need to ask: how do we provide our service or product with innovative and cost-effective means to our customers with controls in place to make sure we can measure the results?
Cassius Shuman is a PBN staff writer and researcher. He can be reached at shuman@pbn.com.
