Three things you can do right now with your technology that may prevent the flu pandemic from affecting your companys productivity.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) predicts that 1/3 of the US population will catch the flu this year, with the average employee missing between two and four weeks of work. This pandemic has the ability to cripple many small- to medium-sized businesses, according to disaster recovery experts.

But believe it or not, how you deal with your computers can actually prevent the flu from affecting your your business productivity.

When most business owners think about the impact of a pandemic illness, the first scenario is often most or all employees calling in sick. Realistically, the possibility of a large number of your employees becoming ill at the same time is pretty low.

Your business is much more likely to feel the impact from the response and containment measures organizations will use to minimize an outbreak. Consider these scenarios:

• Employees cant come to the office because they or a family member may have been exposed to the virus, but arent necessarily ill.
• Or, an employee cant come to work because their child is ill, or their school or daycare service has closed for a week to ten days to contain an outbreak. In each of these scenarios, your employees are healthy, but have pressing personal demands that conflict with showing up at work.

Here are several ways you can use your technology investment to mitigate some effects of a swine flu outbreak both for ill employees, and employees who cant make it to work because of other issues.

1. Do Everything You Can To Slow The Spread Of The Flu
   The flu spreads through personal contact like shaking hands, touching a keyboard or mouse used by an infected coworker, and through the air by coughing and sneezing.

   So watch who you touch and use disinfectant wipes to clean your workspace including the keyboard and mouse before and after you use them.

   You can also reduce the amount of people who need to touch your computer equipment by using a program like our Experts Total Support service, where the technician can work on your system remotely.

2. Stay In Touch Electronically
   Timely communication may be one of the keys to keeping your employees from becoming ill. Consider setting up an email list service so that employees can notify one another if they or a family member has become ill. You may even consider using the email to text message capability most cell phone providers offer to alert employees if another staff member is ill, or will be out caring for a family member.
3. Prepare For Employee Absence With Remote Access
   No matter how hard you try to prevent it, you may still have some of your staff out sick at the same time. While no one with the flu is going to do much besides lie in bed, many employees will work part time from home if they have access to their office computer.

   Some doctors believe this could actually hasten their recovery by eliminating boredom. So, setting up a way that your employees can remote into their computer from home helps you both.

Weve compiled a free report to help you address some of these issues. The Ultimate Small Business Owners Guide To Setting Up A Work From Home Or Remote Network Access System includes all of the information you need to set up a work from home program that is both useful for employees, and safe for your business.

For a free copy of this report, call the office at (954) 920-9604, or e-mail info@connections.com.

In the past 10 years, over 10,000 new regulations have been placed on the books by local, state, and federal agencies pertaining to the handling, storage, and disposal of confidential client, patient, and employee documents and information. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for example, recently enacted one of these privacy laws and is requiring anyone who has business in that state to comply by March 2010. 

Basically, ANY company that holds social security numbers (your employees’ SS#’s, for example), credit cards, or financial statements needs to comply with these regulations or the fines for not doing so can be hefty. 

Want to make sure you stay on the right side of these laws? Here are a few tips that will go a long way in making sure you don’t end up fined, sued, or with a bad reputation for not securing client or employee information:

1. Get The Facts- If you think you are holding confidential information that should be secured, ask a qualified attorney who specializes in data confidentiality in your industry about what you must do to meet new government regulations.
2. Encrypt Your Backups- Make sure your backups are at least 32-bit encryption. Encryption takes every keystroke you type and transforms it into 32 different characters, making it nearly impossible for hackers to use the information, even if they were able to steal it. Some backup solutions will even provide tighter security with 256-bit encryption.
3. Have A Powerful Firewall-Firewalls keep hackers and other intruders from getting into your network and accessing important, confidential and private information. If you have the right firewall in place, it should act like a shield over your data and give you the protection you need to be in compliance with these laws.
4. Lockdown Your Passwords- One surefire way to prevent any unauthorized access to privacy information and take a step toward regulatory compliance is to make sure only those who need the passwords to your computers have them. 

I’m sure you’ve been on an airplane, and listened to the droning safety announcement by a bored flight attendant. On my last flight, I actually went to sleep during the announcement, and woke up when we landed in Fort Lauderdale!. Suffice it to say, the drudgery and routine of every day life is something we all put up with.

Southwest Airlines has always attempted to inject some fun into their interaction with their clients… it’s one of the reasons they rate the highest in overall customer satisfaction in their industry. The following video has been making it’s way around the Internet, and I happened to see it last night. I realized afterwards that I had a huge smile on my face, much like all the passengers in the video. It hit me again how important it is to stand out in a crowd, to take a chance that you’ll look like a dope, and really make your clients experience memorable. How much fun can you have in your business?

Most business take advantage of some sort of credit reporting. For years, I’ve used Dun and Bradstreet to pull credit reports on new clients to get a handle on what sort of credit risk they could be to me. The problem is the cost is high, and the information is often a bit dated.

Cortera’s solution does a really neat twist… they report the normal credit reporting on a tiered cost structure from free to reasonable, but they also allow end users to post their own comments and ratings. This is where the real power of crowd sourcing can make this site explode, IF Cortera gets it right. As of this moment, the number of comments on the site are minimal, and some that I found look like it’s some sort of an automated poster that just posts general comments.  I tried to call the company about this, but could only leave a message. The company is right here in Boca Raton, so I just may have to get in my car and go visit them!

Bottom line, they provide a viable and lower cost option to the traditional credit reports from the likes of D&B. If that’s all they did, they are competing on a price commoditization. If they get the community of users operational, watch out because this site has the potential to revolutionize how you manage credit risk in your company!