Yesterday my internet went down, I didn’t have access, I was cut off. How was I going to work without my connection. I restarted modems and hardware at the demark with flashing lights, no luck…still cut off. Little red lights everywhere. For a moment, for a split second, my heart skipped a beat…I’ll have to watch free TV!!!
Back to work. I rang my provider and sat online for support, it was obviously a supply issue, a 46-minute wait to confirm this but you know, has to be done. I could download the app and check my line if I wanted, the recording told me, I really wanted to but, yeah, nah, that couldn’t happen.
So, what was I going to do while sitting, waiting for support. My mobile phone was working, and I could use the Teams and Office 365 Mobile Apps, this was my only connection to the internet. I quickly started hot spotting and life carried on, but it got me thinking.
This is not going to work for everyone. I get a phone subsidy but if I didn’t, I certainly wouldn’t be that keen on sucking up my personal data to do work, and could that reasonably expected of staff, probably not.
That thought then took me back to my early years when you actually used your computer without an internet connection. Email wasn’t constantly streaming into your Inbox; Teams wasn’t yelling for your attention at the side lines and fact checking information meant asking some questions or opening a book.
This brought me around to working offline, what could I do, where I didn’t need, email, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, this list goes on. Just me, offline with my computer and my installed applications.
I used to do this all the time, it was a huge part of my job when I was younger, so why the mind block when the internet goes down. I accepted quickly that it was just that, a mind block. Depending on the role you have, there’s generally something you can do that doesn’t require that connection to the internet.
The work I was doing would be synced back to OneDrive as soon as that all important connection was re-established. To be fair, it wasn’t long before it was back and 30-minutes had flown by, my call was also answered earlier than predicted as the calling queue pretty much had the same problem and with reconnection, we all hung up.
It’s something to think about though, what work can be done without an internet connection. I understand this is unique to every workspace, but most end users today may not be aware of what they can and can’t do when this happens, for whatever reason, our clients have outages and hate paying staff to sit, drink coffee and natter while their IT folk are praying its not their fault and some poor body at the providers end is highly stressed if it’s their fault.
Maybe a list of tasks that can be done in an outage would be something your customers would appreciate. They themselves probably don’t know either so having a list of things that staff can do when the internet is down would be helpful. It can take the edge off the stress, at least folk can be productive while the issue is sorted, the client will feel better, and time will hopefully pass more quickly.
Here’s a list I’ve started
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Write emails and save to drafts in Outlook App, then send when you can
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File emails in your Outlook Apps, just a general tidy-up
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Write a blog, write anything using the Word App
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Create that spreadsheet you’ve been putting off with the Excel App
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Organise Your Desktop, delete the old stuff, especially all the jokes and memes
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Check your local computer for files that should be online, create folder locally, move them there and move them online when you can
Things to do without the computer
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Clean your office
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Have that team meeting now rather than later
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Catch up on phone calls, take notes to update CRM systems and things to do when you can.
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Make a to do list
You could add unique things that are specific to different client sites. Helping to keep your client’s staff productive in downtime, well doesn’t that show you care and appreciate how frustrating the situation can be. Make sure you supply the list beforehand of course.
