During any crisis, remaining flexible and compassionate in your response is important for helping employees, customers, partners, and beyond feel like their anxieties are understood and their uncertainties are being alleviated by an environment of support and stability. From the onset of the pandemic, Seaborn has worked to achieve this for all, remaining committed to communicating and maintaining our health and safety protocols for our employees, customers, and vendors alike, as well as looking for ways to support the global community. Core to this was remaining mindful of the restrictions in place across different countries, states, or municipalities and this understanding has helped us — and many companies across the globe — form strategies that keep everyone as safe and prepared as possible.
Seaborn is extremely fortunate in that we play a part in global connectivity delivering transport, ethernet private line, and IP services, so the infrastructure that supported our strategies were already in place. Redundancy, diversity, and risk-mitigation plans for our essential points of presence (POPs), cable landing stations, network operations center (NOC), and back-up NOC locations are part of how we operate on a daily basis, so this was an advantage that we were glad to have on behalf of our ecosystem of personnel. Our headquarters staff moved to work from home immediately, our NOC was fully remote within three days, and our cable station staff were able to hand off remotely, so the risk of infection was mitigated. We were determined to ensure the concerns of our entire team were addressed quickly.
Nevertheless, not all are prepared in this way, and being mindful of different experiences is core to how we all navigate supporting one another and serving as a partner to those who depend on us in times of uncertainty. Keeping those around us abreast of our internal plans and changes was (and is) absolutely vital, as it provides a sense of predictability or stability wherever possible. Employees, suppliers, and customers need to know what to expect so that they themselves can make their own plans and find success in this new normal.
As Seaborn instituted policies and best practices aligning with the World Health Organization guidelines, we looked to ensure that we were updating customers and employees along the way. We provided our offices with the necessary information, guidelines, and hygiene supplies to reduce the risk of infection from COVID-19 and while all non-essential travel was suspended, we remained fully supportive of virtual meetings and other remote capabilities.
Still, the importance of more widespread digital opportunity and connectivity in this pandemic can’t be ignored. Coping with such an all-encompassing impact and moving forward successfully as global citizens calls for more than just company protocols — it requires community support. In an effort to offer this support to those who depend on it, we expanded our IP and infrastructure partnership with our regional partner EdgeUno. It’s key to our values that, as a leading network operator, we do what we can to provide support to communities in need, as well as ensure the safety and security of our colleagues and partners across the globe. We may not all be in the same boat, but we are all in this together.
