Liquid Telecom has put plans in place to deal with the novel coronavirus Covid-19.
With more than 2 000 employess in 13 African countries, the company has issued a statement sharing the steps it has taken to mitigate risk during the outbreak.
Liquid Telecom has a dedicated business continuity management team with continuity co-ordinators covering each office and every business function. The team designs, tests and updates impact-based planning for events including health pandemics, natural disasters, data security breaches, acts of terrorism, political unrest, and power and transportation outages.
It has also invested in technology and training that enables it to operate effectively in the event that a situation necessitates that employees work remotely in a given region.
Work-from-home processes allow for uninterrupted global functionality across the employee base and are enabled by remote desktop capabilities, along with remote video conference and mobile telephone forwarding technologies. The group regularly tests this functionality and ensure that it is effective in supporting business operations.
Liquid Telecom will continue to use video-conference, video and webinar capabilities to engage clients in the event that in-person meetings or conferences are not feasible.
In addition, it has an additional layer of redundancy through its ability to shift work across it global network of offices.
“We are approaching Covid-19 outbreak with extreme caution to ensure the health and safety of our employees and customers,” according to the company statement. “We are also following guidance from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and relevant governmental health organizations and implementing their relevant precautionary and hygiene measures within all our operating environments.”
Apart from enabling remote working, the company has also restricted non-essential employee travel to and from affected areas and mandated a 14-day quarantine/remote work requirement for any employee who has visited high risk areas.
It is also co-ordinating with suppliers and internal business units to guarantee continuity of supply and stocks of key components for services to customers and maintenance requirements.