At Delvinia, our priority has always been to stay ahead of the curve, and at no point has that been more important than during this unprecedented time of global health concern. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, our Executive Team has been meeting daily to discuss the best course of action and actively communicate with our staff, clients and partners. As of Sunday, we received word from a credible source that the Canadian government was possibly going to announce some extreme measures in an effort to combat the spread of the virus, and with our head office and operations in Canada, this was a major concern.  Given this new piece of information we determined that it was time to take the next steps in our top priority of ensuring the health and safety of our team while maintaining our business continuity.  We set up a conference call on Sunday evening, and showing their continued dedication, we had 100% participation from our managers. On this call, they learned that we would be starting our Work from Home (WFH) strategy within the next 24 hours and how they needed to prepare their teams.

While we were stepping into uncharted territory without going through gradually testing the impact on our technology, systems and processes, our becoming ISO 27001 certified three years ago was truly showing its value. We have been testing our business continuity plans regularly and happened to have recently gone through an audit of our business continuity plans with an external auditor. Thanks to this, we were confident we could employ our full-scale plan. Every member of our team has been vital in coming together to ensure that not only is everyone safe, but that we are able to continue on with business with no disruption to our valued clients who continue to put their trust in us. While things may not be “business as usual”, businesses still need to run.

Everyone at Delvinia understands that the key to being successful in this difficult period is proactive, consistent and open communication. This goes beyond company-wide emails sent from myself, and relies upon each staff member communicating their challenges (and successes!) with their managers and not sitting back wondering what they can do. In actively communicating with one another, we are able to respond quickly to changing circumstances, and continue to provide the kind of service that has come to be expected from everyone at Delvinia.

Invoking a company-wide WFH strategy can be disruptive, but my singular priority has been to provide the kind of leadership that allows our team to feel safe and confident that we will manage through this challenge together.  Having managed through the dot com crash in 2001 and then the financial crisis and recession in 2008, my experience and the experience of my executive team will help us deal with every challenge along the way.

While we may be apart physically for now, the team has come together in the incredible way they always do. I expect we will need to adapt ourselves more times in the near future, but I have full confidence in our ability to do so and thrive.

Sending positive and healing vibes out to everyone. Stay safe, and be good to one another.