Planning for seamless business continuity: interview with Aruba

As COVID-19 spreads to an ever-growing segment of the global population, the top priority of every organization in this time of crisis should be on protecting the health and safety of its employees now and planning for seamless business continuity and the future return to the workplace. As part of our ‘Future of Workplace Experience’ series, we are delighted to have Keerti Melkote, Co-Founder & President at Aruba, to touch on just that and to share their incredible effort to support frontline health workers. Check out our interview below:

How has Aruba adjusted during Covid-19?

Aruba has over 7,000 employees globally, you can imagine the scale and speed we needed to effectively communicate with our employees and execute plans:

• We implemented social distancing in the workplace in Singapore with our employees coming into work at designated times throughout the day with alternate desk arrangements. By March, everybody had shifted to working from home globally.
• Help employees stay connected at home: Aruba’s remote access points allow corporate networks to be extended into their home, which allows the company to establish a working from home process fairly quickly and deliver the same seamless work experience at home.

How do you think the office environment is going to change?

• Healthcare needs and employee wellbeing will be key: expect a more intensive cleaning schedule, keeping office and surfaces clean at all times to ensure a safe environment for our staff.
• Expect a rise in ‘mixed meetings‘, meaning we will need to consider how people will be using workspaces differently when work life returns to normal. With home offices being an accepted workplace now, meeting areas will need to be designed and equipped with technology that enables both in-person and virtual interactions, especially bringing reliable and quality video capability into meetings.

How have companies addressed remote working differently?

• Working from home is no longer a choice and technology is the enabler to this – but the key is to do it securely.
• Aruba has been using Wifi-based location technology as data input for workspace planners, meaning the real estate and workplace team can now use real-time data to plan ahead and make suggestions. For example, our data doesn’t tell us who that person is, it just tells us where that person is. With the Covid-19 context to practise social distancing, this real-time data can help with our future space planning in regards to our employees’ health and safety.

“People move, networks must follow”

• In the era of IoT and flexible working, and even more so now with everybody working remotely, ensuring seamless connectivity and power will allow people to work from anywhere, anytime.
• Network will need to follow you to your home and as things return to normal, places in between such as coffee shops will also be important to ensure people stay connected.

What has Aruba done in response to COVID-19?

• Connectivity is key to healthcare workers: Wifi enables doctors to examine patients safely at a distance, and also allows network connectivity at pop-up hospitals and testing sites.
• Leveraging our Airheads community by setting up volunteer groups across 40 countries to help deploying Wifi at testing sites and pop-up hospitals.