How my company's business continuity protocol in Malaysia is preparing to handle the Covid 19 Coronavirus threat

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The company I work for hires around 15 k people and the recent corona virus scare in DBS bank has got them activating their disaster recovery preparation activities. Apparently at DBS bank in Singapore they had to ask the whole department (around 300 staff) not to come to office after one of the department staff contracted the highly contagious corona virus aka Covid-19 aka nCoV.


Some trivia facts here, corona is spanish for the english word crown. As the corona virus resembles a crown under microscope, hence it got the name corona virus. A lot of people think the corona virus was named after corona beer.




The  prevention protocols implemented at our company are :
- All employees given face masks and disinfectant liquid placed at strategic areas around the office.


- Each team has sent 1-5 to the IT DR center. These persons are not allowed to come to the headquarters HQ until further notice. A few local banks are also following suite to do this whereby some of their HQ staff will be stationed their Bangi datacenters (eg Maybank, Public Bank, CIMB Bank). This activity is called split-operation.



- Special boom gates setup around building perimeters. All personnel and visitors entering the company premises are taken temperature and if the temperature exceeds 38 degrees Celsius they will be denied entry and need to visit a doctor for further examination. Funny thing was after lunch time a large majority of the personnels failed the benchmark due to the hot weather outside, they were later given some time to cool down and then a 2nd temperature reading was conducted.

- Every team nominated 1-3 person who will be given laptop that we can use to connect back to office from home. 

- Travelling to China, Hong Kong and Singapore is banned by the company whether for leisure or business. Traveling to the other countries not stated is discouraged. All travel arrangements needs to be declared to the company's HR department.

Updates : Overseas travel are now highly discourage regardless of country.


- Timely reminders on hygiene, health and avoidance tips via company email.


- Vendors coming into offices visit have to be limited and further queries on their travel history will be queried. Those coming from China, Hong Kong and Singapore require medical clearance.

- Employee interviews all done via Skype where the interviewee can have their job interview at home.

- Closing up canteen stores which was previously opened to the public to only staff.

- Allowing front line staff to wear facemasks when dealing with customers.



- Restriction in attending any external events or training.


Note : I wrote this whole post in 10 mins so didn’t have much time to write an essay about it. I hope this sharing can help smaller companies see how we’re doing it. Some of the steps are pretty extreme but better safe and never.

CIO magazine interviews a few companies on their BCP (Business Continuity Protocol) but none of it details much on their activities.
https://www.cio.com/article/3526341/how-cios-in-se-asia-are-combating-coronavirus-through-business-continuity.html

One interesting item which my company could implement from the article is having internal company apps to be able to access via mobile. This is quite relevant nowadays as not every employee is equipped with a company laptop.

My friend who works in Citibank Malaysia mentioned to me that they are have implemented work from home team roster. Each person in the team takes turns working from home.

Human Resource Online has got an article on handling business continuity for this virus threat here

Updates 20200311
As the covid-19 threat gets more serious. The company implemented more measures to combat the covid-19 corona virus threat. The new measures implemented are :

  • Provide more employees with laptops to work from home. Ramp up purchase of VPN tokens for remote access.
  • Identify key personnel and request them not to attend any company functions (eg annual dinners, seminars)
  • Made it compulsory for employees to do self quarantine for 14 days and travelling to overseas is highly prohibited
  • Temporary ban for vendors visiting our offices was put in place
I also got word that for government departments, employees who are on staggered shift to work/stay from home are heavily advised against going out of the house.

Updates 20200312
WHO (world health organization) just classified the corona virus covid-19 as a global pandemic. This is going to cause a lot of panic and more precautionary measures being implemented.

Updates 20200407
For now everyone probably knows that the corona virus covid-19 is a serious issue now countries are implementing country wide lock downs and my company also has stepped up the control measures.

  • food at canteen must be taken back to eat at the work place
  • social distancing is in place at lifts, canteen line
  • increase the number of people having laptops to remote back from home
  • increase the use of video conferencing software for meetings. These software are Cisco Webex, Zoom and Microsoft Teams
  • reduce number of staff in the office, staff are asked not to come to office until country wide lock down are lifted
Updates 20200422
Things have got much serious after my last updates with police and military roadblocks around to enforce the MCO (Mandatory Control Order) in Malaysia.

Moving forward, I'm very sure most companies will start to implement disaster simulation with virus outbreak scenarios.


Links
https://www.dbs.com.sg/index/default.page
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51470363
https://www.humanresourcesonline.net/coronavirus-guidelines-for-hr-and-employers-on-business-continuity-planning/