Nothing was more exciting than waking up as a child and hearing your school was shut.
Although we’ve all come into work this morning we can’t deny there is a part of us all that hopes it absolutely belts down!
Our priority is obviously the safety of our staff and ensuring they get home without any risk but also who can deny that time for them to go sledging with their family? Dads need a snow ball flat out in the face!
On a serious note, snow can cost the UK economy around £500 million a day in staff absences. That’s why at MirrorSphere we’re all for flexible working; backed up by the latest technology, which allows staff to enjoy the snow rather than dreading the drive in. As an IT company we have service levels that we must ensure we provide seamlessly to our customers.
To be honest, even when it’s not snowing many of our team are often working from home, that’s just the way we roll. We sometimes even time our coffee breaks to coincide so we can have a catch-up – just as though we were in the real office.
In the 21st century the technology is there to allow us to work in a way that was not easy to do even a decade ago. But with the advent of the cloud, advanced collaboration tools and improved reliability of broadband, it is possible to work in a virtual office (and build a snowman in the back garden).
So how is MirrorSphere so good at running a smooth operation? With a team working together despite being in different buildings and even different counties?
Well, we use a combination of technologies, including:
Freshdesk
This allows our customers to log support tickets and allows us to respond and even access their environment to investigate problems and carry out urgent fixes. They get a seamless service and we get to stay cosy in front of the fire. Everyone wins!
Office 365
This gives us so many applications we couldn’t live without. Especially important to us is the ability to access documents as a group through SharePoint and edit and comment on them, without having to scrape the car and slip and slide all the way to MirrorSphere HQ.
Slack
Our bread and butter internal communication tool. We’re constantly in touch, discussing ideas and giving feedback through instant messaging … and occasionally slipping out of work mode to talk about everything from frilly kickers to 80s rap (yes, really)! Different ‘channels’ within Slack allow us to keep the work and non-work stuff separate, otherwise it could get embarrassing!
Ring Central
We’re big fans of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). It allows us to manage our calls and route them to the appropriate person, even if they’re out sledging (and happen to have a mobile on them).
MirrorSphere Managed Service Platform
Our managed service platform that we use to proactively monitor our customers IT environments lives in a highly secure cloud which can be accessed from anywhere – even a toboggan.
So that’s how we do it. We do business and throw snowballs while the schools are shut.
Brrrr-ing on the big freeze … because we’ve got snow angels to make!
(or even organising an inter-company snowball fight) click here!