Don’t blame the baby!

Picture the scene: you run an event management company. There are multiple large events being planned at any one time and various people in the office work on them.

Your Executive Assistant is pregnant. She has been interviewing for her temporary replacement whilst she takes at least six months’ maternity leave. She has started to prepare handover notes. It’s a month until her due date and she’s planning to continue working for as long as possible.

One Tuesday morning when you’re in Berlin on business, you receive a text message – a beaming Assistant holding a tiny bundle which has arrived into the world four weeks early. Mother and baby are doing well, maternity leave has started.

Not only have you not had the chance to buy cake for a leaving tea, the temp isn’t due to start for another three weeks, and none of your staff have been involved in the handover notes. No one is able to log onto your Assistant’s computer as it’s password protected. In addition, she is known for saving the files upon which she is working on to her desktop, as opposed to on the centralised system. She also has files on her personal laptop which is at home whilst she is at the hospital. She was working specifically on two large events which are due to take place in a fortnight’s time. In short, you’re scuppered.

Office Consort wouldn’t let this happen. Major project information is stored on a centralised system. Any member of approved staff can log in from anywhere and see exactly where you’re up to with each project. They can see files that have been created relating to individual projects, amend and work from them directly from one spot. Babies or no babies, you’re covered. Phew.