Working from home

On Monday, 16th March, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that all businesses that were able to work from home should do. Thankfully for us, all of our systems, both internal and external are cloud-based so we can technically work anywhere with an internet connection. This meant that in theory working from home would not be a huge problem for us. Of course, we soon realised there were both pros and cons to what would become the new norm. We checked our working from home policy, had a final briefing, and by 10pm that night all our staff had an office computer and everything else they needed to work from home the next day.

Working from home definitely has its benefits: I have a toddler and a 4 month old who I am getting to spend lots of extra time with even though I am working the same (if not more) hours during the day, access to a well-stocked fridge and plenty of home made cake! When chatting to the team they mentioned that a big positive to reflect on from this time are definitely the hours gained from not travelling to the office each day. However, lockdown also has its drawbacks - we find that meetings and conversations take slightly longer via video chat and we miss the connection of the team all being together in one space. I suspect that despite the chat on social media, working from home will still be the exception rather than the norm.

On Wednesday, 18th March, the government announced that schools were going to be closed the following week for all students except for those of key-workers and vulnerable children. With just two days to prepare, schools were forced to close to the vast majority of their students and move to online teaching. The challenge this posed to schools was massive and it's incredible to see how well schools have responded. We offered to help however we could and prepared for what we knew was going to be a step into the unknown for everybody.

The challenges

Our infrastructure costs have basically doubled overnight; we've required new servers, additional bandwidth and higher service fees for things such as notifications. Thankfully, we've always been very careful to 'plan for a rainy day' as a business and so these costs can be weathered for now without any impact on our customers. It's just really great to see the platform being used so much.

The biggest challenge has been the additional workload that Covid-19 has brought us; partly because we've seen an increase in the amount of schools contacting us for guidance, but mostly because we've chosen to rapidly release a host of improvements and new features to help support schools. Our development team, according to the statistics, has been releasing updates around twice as fast as normal. The team have been working late nights, weekends and bank holidays in order to achieve this impressive feat and we've had some really wonderful feedback from schools:

"A massive thank you to you and your team for everything you are doing to support our remote learning protocol. Epraise has been invaluable and your team have been incredibly supportive."

"Loving some of the features you are bringing out. You are absolutely smashing it 😊"

"Epraise and the new functions that have been added have been brilliant and definitely made this time easier. But the support we have received from you guys has been fantastic and so valuable to us. I have been so impressed with your quick responses and patience."

We do this because we know our platform is having a positive impact in our schools and it's clear that the improvements and new features we've been releasing are helping. Between lockdown and May 25th, we've released 65 updates and improvements.

Want to find out more?

Share on social media