People Post is a space for opinion pieces, letters to the editor and guest submissions from members of the Long Beach community. The following is an op-ed submitted by Chris Wacker, CEO of Long Beach-based Laserfiche, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Long Beach Post.

As a long-time city resident and business owner–employing over 300 people at Laserfiche headquarters, I’ve had the privilege of being part of this community in one way or another for nearly 20 years. Like many other residents, I’ve seen our community come together in times of joy and, like now, in times of crisis. I’m referring, of course, to the global coronavirus pandemic and in particular, how it’s impacting our beloved city.

Our team at Laserfiche has been working day and night to protect the safety and health of our workforce and community, and we began shifting our employees to remote work as the seriousness of the situation evolved. Not only have we been working around the clock to ensure our employees themselves can work from home, we’ve also made the decision to suspend all business travel and in-person meetings or events until the end of May (at least).

As more and more cases of the virus are diagnosed in Long Beach and LA County, I want to personally encourage all local business owners to do the right thing: Shift your employees to a remote work model if at all possible. In doing so, you help better protect all residents, especially those who are at higher risk for severe illness. I understand that many businesses have never had to face the prospect of a fully remote work force before. If you’re in that boat, here are some lessons we learned at Laserfiche that may help you during this transition:

• Communicate, communicate, communicate: Develop a robust internal communications strategy as far in advance as possible so that your IT team (even if the “IT department” is just you) can identify workarounds necessary for a fully remote workforce. Make sure employees have direct contact information for the person handling communications so that any questions are quickly and clearly answered. Take advantage of all digital tools and communications channels available to you. We’ve had good results using video conferencing and Microsoft Teams for face-to-face meetings.
•  Make sure you have enough bandwidth: To successfully go remote almost overnight, it’s necessary to establish in advance whether your company has sufficient bandwidth to handle all your employees logging into VPN (virtual private network), and identify which tasks require VPN access in advance.
• Review all critical business processes: Is your main reception number set up to forward incoming calls to a dedicated employee? What happens to shipping and receiving? Will your hiring efforts need to change since you can no longer hold interviews in person? Make a list of all these day-to-day activities so that you can troubleshoot processes before any issues arise.
• Ask your employees what you can do better: Employees and residents are getting information from a lot of sources right now. Ask your employees what they need to be able to do their jobs remotely (or in the case of a restaurant business, what they need to do a job which has changed significantly from dine-in to delivery or take-out only). Be open to hearing what they think needs improvement on an ongoing basis. We are each other’s allies in this— let’s keep our minds and hearts open to new ideas.

I recognize that not every business in Long Beach can (or should) shift to a completely remote workforce. I treasure our local restaurants and other locally-owned businesses. To that end, think about how you can continue to support these folks in a slightly different way.

Go ahead and order takeout or delivery from your favorite place to eat. Call your mom-and-pop hardware store and ask if you can purchase a gift certificate online. Download the Nextdoor app and offer to run errands for neighbors that may need to self-isolate. Be kind to one another. At the end of the day, that is all that really matters. We’re all in this together and if we take care of each other we’ll come out stronger on the other side.