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the broadcast is now starting all attendees are in listen-only mode hello everyone welcome to session three of lean into the community webinar series we have two panelists today that will talk about different aspects of businesses being open right now during koban 19 it's actually coming at a very good time with the virus starting to hit a little bit more in Connecticut towards the end of this month you know sometimes we need to look at how we're running our businesses whether they're essential or even non-essential working remotely and if we're doing the right thing so the two panelists that we have today will talk through some aspects of what you need to be thinking about when you have remote workforce and the technologies behind how you can get that workforce we're working more effectively and efficiently as well as if you do have to keep your doors open we have a panelists that will talk about how to do the proper sanitation and keeping yourself well as the public safe with that I will go to the next slide so I'm your host Wendy Austin I run a digital marketing company here in Connecticut WSI healthy digital solutions I joined the Mid State Chamber of Commerce in February it didn't have a lot of time before everything kind of blew up get out and do networking but I've been you know active with Rosanna and talking to her and wanted to help out my other Connecticut businesses so I'm helping to put together this webinar series and hopefully share a lot of information for Connecticut businesses in general our next panelist speaker is Ari Santiago he has a founder and CEO and president of IT direct a Hartford base technology services firm that helps businesses harder that harness the power of technology to achieve their business goals the company has been awarded many O'War over the years for growth service and workplace culture Ari is a dynamic and passionate speaker on topics that range from cybersecurity basics to high-level business strategy he was awarded the Hartford Business Journal's 40 under 40 award and has been chosen as a board and committee member for several nonprofit organizations around the greater area so Ari with that I'll let you take it away and talk about remote remote workforce sure thank you so much Wendy I really appreciate it it's a pleasure talking to everybody today and have an opportunity to maybe help you think about how to use technology in your businesses you know going through obviously what was a pretty rapid impactful change in the business environment of business climate so um the first thing they don't want to lead off with is everybody's situation is going to be a little different that all of our businesses are a little bit different how we services our customers a little bit different and how we drive value is a little bit different so so I think getting some specific guidance from you know IP whether it's internal IT or your current partner or whatever that might look like it's going to be really important to navigating this correctly and I think we're gonna have some opportunities for QA so I'm gonna I'm gonna talk and kind of give you my thoughts on on kind of where we're going big picture and some down in Derby specifics that are that are general should apply to everybody but I look forward to answering any questions and so you know if and when we get to the question section you know please don't hesitate to ask very specific questions about your specific business or situation you know I want to make sure that you get value out of this and you'd be surprised a specific question you asked that might not seem like it would impact others could drive a ton of value to other people so hopefully we'll we'll be able to get people some good value today so the first thing I want to talk about is I I think it's important to note that the world has really changed I believe that business is going to be changed irrevocably through through this whole process and I think a lot of that change is going to be a bit embracing of Technology I think our inability to be together for health reasons is going to open up people's eyes to the opportunities to use technology more and get them a lot more comfortable with it and I think that can present a lot of opportunities for our businesses going forward and so as we go through the process here it was hard especially over the last you know month and a half to think about the future but now as we're starting to see you know the state government and the federal government start talking about the opening up of the economy and what it's going to look like now's a great time to start thinking about how we can leverage technology a little bit more into the future and what these changes could mean to help us be more efficient be better to our employees and be better to our customers so you want to encourage everyone to take what I say and then really think about that on a on a go-forward basis so where are we today and if we want to stay open the first thing I encourage everyone to think about is it's always it's enticing to start thinking about technology so give me a list of technologies what technology can I use for this or use for that and I really encourage our clients and people I talk to to really think about business process first thinking about what we do today and understanding what that is and how it drives value to our customers is going to be critical to put them together a good technology strategy and it's much easier to say hey this is how we drive value this is how we used to do it and this is how we're going to do it in the future that process is a much better way to get a good clean outcome than trying to take some technologies and figure out a reference that come back to your business so what I recommend is literally getting a piece of paper we're doing it on your computer and making a list look at the list of the services or the products or whatever the value that you provide to your customer and and write those down right I'm trying to get those off of proposals that we've done or our own websites or what have you but generate that list right of all the different services that you provide and then try and understand okay in today's world based on working remotely or having a limited amount of staff the office or our inability to go to customer sites or the inability of the customers to come to us here's the gaps that are preventing us from delivering the value we delivered before the coronavirus crisis hit and then taking that list and understanding what technology is possible to fill those gaps and some of them are partial fills so I'll give you an example you know if you're a dental office it's a real struggle right now right dentist's office have to be closed and even if you were look at trying to do something digitally you can't do a filling or a cleaning or put in a crown digitally so but there are some things we can do and so you know tella dentistry or telemedicine is something that can be done and then thinking about okay well what technology would I use to make that happen and trying to map that out right and so like that doc see me for example might be a great a great way to do that there if you're a therapist right that would be another example of somebody when they can't come to you but you could really develop a very strong you know tella telepresence for therapy that actually might be something that would be great long-term right so it's a similar initial challenge but different long-term way to fill the gap and maybe different technology as well right to need audio and video or just video so just recapping that I think it's important to start with our list of services or value that we provide to our customer identify the gaps we have today and then start consulting with people to figure out the technologies that you would need to fill those gaps right so that's I think the most important thing to work on and then you need to execute those plans and so I think I'll give you some sort of Technology recommendations think about you know when you're looking at connecting so one of the things that people often talk about is collaborating with their existing employees and so we've probably had a bunch of Word documents or Excel documents or all that stuff and how do we share that stuff are we mailing it to each other is that going to be an effective way to do it you know probably not and so I think we need to look at file sharing and communication internal office communication technologies and I really strongly recommend that all businesses if they weren't looking at Microsoft 365 before or also called office 365 if you weren't looking at that before that would be a critical product line but to look at and really adapting to use more than just the email platform portion of it which a lot of people were using it already know about but use a lot of the other components and so things like onedrive for business SharePoint in Microsoft teams which I'll talk about a little bit more later are really gonna round out a platform that can allow us to work extremely efficiently even when we're not near each other another one that we've been talking a lot about lately is video conferencing video conferencing is so important when we can't meet face to face a conference call just doesn't provide the same level of communication and connectivity you know with each other as humans as a video conference does and I'm sure many of us have heard over the years people say that communication is like 80 percent you know body language and only 20 percent kind of what we say and so losing that 80 percent without a video conferences are real is a real challenge and so I think it's important about okay well we need some video conferencing what's the right video conferencing technology that we need to use and I would encourage everyone to think that know it might not be a one-size-fits-all for every situation for those of you that haven't been paying attention zoom has become extremely popular but but what's also become clear is that zoom is not strictly security it does not have end-to-end encryption and so it really in many business environments for example medical environments unless you have the HIPAA security upgrade you know you really can't be using that you know for medical visits it's not ITAR or NIST compliance so if you do manufacturing work in the government or defense supply chain you know you can't you got to be careful and not use zoom for those type of meetings and so that's where you might want to look at something like a WebEx is one way to do it or or what I was referencing earlier which is Microsoft teams so again going back to that Microsoft 365 platform building off of that we can use Microsoft teams that can do video conferencing both internally as well as with people outside of our organizations do so in a secure way which is a super critical another thing that you know people are really taking bigger time advantage of now is improving their online banking and online financial transactions and so you know many of us maybe we're doing online banking before but we weren't using a very streamlined online way to manage our billing and so bill comm as an example is something that integrates you know with QuickBooks which is a very widely used at this platform and can really streamline our management of our accounts payable so that's important but now we're also probably thinking about accounts receivable how do we get cash into our business and so I think there's a lot of opportunity to look at ACH payments and there's some opportunities there with Bill comm and some other platforms that allow you to accept payments internally either via ACH or electronic check and I would recommend kind of looking into those so where make sure we're taking advantage of technology to streamline our systems including collecting and sending in money so let's also talk about remote access and how we might access our internal systems remotely and again this is a case-by-case basis but there's a lot of technology out there so if you have an office where people had desktop computers in the office but now they're working remotely and they didn't have a laptop you can have them leverage their home computer right to remote into their work computer and so there's a opportunities to use things like remote desktop you can use a third-party platform like log me in or go to my PC that allow people to access and work off their home computer much like they were sitting in the office even when they're remote so certainly want to look at that stuff like stuff like that and you can you can use one screen multiple screens even when you're working remotely there's a lot of opportunities to be very efficient even when you're working you know working remotely and those technologies tend to use limited bandwidth so even if you don't have fantastic internet you can still get some work done so certainly recommend looking into that and you know I want to just two more quick items I want to touch on the first thing is right now cyber security which has been hot topic for a long time is something that I think we need to take even more seriously right now as we're changing and moving into these different work environments and I've talked about some new technologies already but I think we got to be careful that we're paying attention to cyber security throughout this process so as your new systems you're you're starting to use it's important to ask the question about security to make sure that the news you're putting in isn't unnecessarily or unwittingly putting your business at risk and so let me give you some some quick some quick tips on cyber security the first thing is communicate communicate communicate so the people that are working in our businesses need to be made aware on a regular basis about the increased risks to set in cyber security right now so so some examples are fake zoom domains that have been registered and these fake phishing emails that will encourage people to join meetings that look real but they're fake websites to be able to load malicious software onto your desktops to try and steal information or steal access to your accounts and so it's important that we remind people that listen take a moment make sure you read the email and identify that it's from a known source and it was something that you were expecting and if it's not call them and just check on it you know and having that communication up front before people have a problem is going to be critical and then reminding them of it hey you know we did start using GoToWebinar as an example but if the email didn't come from Wendy you know make sure you don't do that and remind them hey we we would never get an email that asks you to put in personal information so the Meno comes in asking for your user name and password or prompts you for that that you weren't expecting that's a huge red flag make sure you call IT before you put that in you know very much better safe than sorry another thing is we're signing up for these new platforms is we want to remind people not to use simple passwords and not to use the same passwords so if you're using your login an email address to sign up for a goto meeting or a LogMeIn don't use the same username and password combination that you use for your back account because you just never know that even if you don't give it up if the platform attack and you're you in a passbook gets out one of the things that malicious accurate will do is try using that user and password combination on other websites so getting away from using same password and multiple locations is going to be critically important and relatedly reminding people not to use simple passwords not sites right now don't really let you use simple password you know should have have capital lowercase letters as well as members but it's inferred to remind people that you know don't use your name your kid name and date of birth things that people might even read yes just a really good best practice to use some unknown piece of information and really trying with your passwords that's random as you can and it possible using a password management tool like a LastPass or a little before that can help you generate rhythm pass for it to save them really be a big benefit and increase security not to do that and now finally on the on the security front multi-factor authentication the many of us a public experience where we go to our bank or some sites and after we log in we get a code that sent me a text message or something like that to our phone to put in and that's what's called a second factor it's a multi-factor authentication is a system where you don't just have a username and password but you have another piece of information and a lot of places are using this now with applications or text messaging then it's important that when we use systems that are critical we put multi-factor on that so payroll processing bank accounts financial institutions important vendor relationships where we can have deep credit lines or we can order stuff online those are places we want to try and have multi-factor authentication and wherever possible if you're getting a VPN or remote access into your office any type of access like that We strongly recommend something that has multi-factor authentication to avoid people we don't know gaining access to our corporate networks which could cause a lot of damage even if they don't steal any information they were to take those networks down that in and of itself can cause some serious damage the addicted that was the last thing but I will say one other piece which is there's a we have seen is a lot of people rushing to get set up and they start using three platforms whether it's Google Drive or free Dropbox or other things that that are not paid for to start sharing their business information with their different employees because it's something that they knew from residential or someone told them about it and it's free and easy to set up and I think it's important to go back now and take a look at those platforms and understand what risks are to your business by having platforms out there like that and you know we have seen an unfortunate an example where you know people are allowed of the allowed staff to use personal accounts to start using corporate in from and then some stuff was identified and the data that they needed to track that down was on the person's computer in a personal account that they couldn't get access to and so now there's a fight over who has access and is it corporate information and someone saying it's deleted and so it's just it's important that we keep track of our corporate information and don't lose sight of the fact that in an effort to be speedy and fast we may made some decisions we need to rethink and so important stuff there and I know we're moving into another phase of the crisis we're sort of getting into what I've been calling the abnormal C phase right we're not so much in the rush of trying to figure out what's going on but many of us are sort of settling into this this new normal or this abnormal C and so I think now is a time when we're talking about training and enhancing let's say we picked a video conferencing platform and we're using Microsoft teens or or whatever we're using now's a good time to start sharing information about how do you video conference effectively right lighting is important and basic tips like if you're on a video conference and you have a bright light behind you whether it's recessed lighting in the ceiling or a lamp the webcam has a hard time focusing on you and so you'll notice people kind of get dark and light and dark and light it's very distracting and so by simply turning off the light behind you you may see a big enhancement thing obviously even better would be lighting on the other side of the webcam but certain you know stuff like that also helping people understand how to use the mute and the unmute feature effectively and how a leader of a meeting can actually generate you can actually mute everyone up front and you know we've been for another example is when we're having meetings with customers or doing sales presentations which we're helping people do online a lot it's great to start the meeting with explaining how we're going to manage the meeting hey we're starting off everybody's going to be on mute right now during the presentation if you have a question put it into the chat and telling people have to lose that and have someone else in your company monitoring the chat and so if the question is appropriate to interrupt someone has the authority to say interrupt and say oh are excuse me we've got a great question you know coming in from Araceli and kind of get that going right middle or keep the question you know to the end but just for the training on that etiquette for example of how to use video conferencing to really help people use it use it better same thing with file sharing so I talked about Microsoft 365 so a lot of people didn't realize that once you share the files people can actually work on them at the same time to going back and showing you know how poor people can be inside the same Word or Excel document and collaborate it to collaborate on it simultaneously and showing them how to do that or teaching how to share with people outside the organization but doing it in a safe way or another example of screen share so if I want to review a presentation or look at a website with somebody in my company before I might have them come over to my desk and look over my shoulder obviously that's a challenge now but almost all these video conferencing platforms allow you to share your screen and so making sure that people understand hey you can share your screen and the difference between sharing a screen and sharing an application so people don't inadvertently you know share the wrong thing so some new trainings I think are really positive there and then the last piece you know I wanted to leave you guys with is just maybe enhancements and I think a lot of the platforms have tool sets or features that we don't know about and so a lot of us are getting to a point in the business environment where we're this new abnormal see period where maybe not as fully functional as we were before the demand from customers isn't as high as it was before in many businesses but hopefully we've applied for the PPP program and so we've got this like breathing room where we've got this this cash to keep a role going so what can we do and I think now's a great time to look at enhancing you know what are some of the projects technology wise that we left behind and we didn't do because we just didn't have the time or what are some of the platforms we're using right now that might have features that we don't have and so allocating some of our you know human capital resources that are that are helped to be paid for to this government program to find ways to enhance our business so that as we started coming out of the Cova 19 crisis we actually can find a way to get some advantage some long-term been you know from this period and I know it's hard to connect what's happening with benefit but I think there really are some opportunities here and I think companies are looking embrace those opportunities will be well served and well suited to meet customer needs when we get out of this so hopefully that was a good primer and and I shared some some good information to help make people think and look forward to having the opportunity to answer some questions as we go through this Thank You Ari and yes so if you have any questions like are I mentioned you can always put the questions into the questions box or you can raise your hand and I can unmute your mic if there's a question that you feel would be hard to try to type up however I do have a couple of questions that came from people that will be viewing this later so you had mentioned the zoom and the security what is your recommendation about conference calling versus zoom conference calling meaning our audio calls resume yeah so I guess I'm two things on that is I think most of the quality conferencing platforms will include audio in the paid version so for example I mean the paid version is game by the way it does have audio you can set up a you know Microsoft teams I had mentioned if you get the upgrade there I think it's an abcess $4 a month you can get a audio conference number and then when you send out the meeting if you just don't include the web link you know they can just I Lin and you can use an audio conference their WebEx could do that as well same thing with this go to webinar or go to meeting platform you know if you just send out the dial-in and access code you know you know you can use that so I'm partial Wendy to to having less platforms than more so we can kind of get enhance one of the platforms that we have I think you know to do audio and video that would be ideal and I've said one more thing which is if you're not interested in doing video conferencing or it's not something you're into you know your phone your phone provider if you call them they probably could add audio conferencing option to your existing phone system you know for a pretty reasonable a pretty reasonable fee obviously that that wouldn't have the video part but if you don't want that you might be able to do that without you happen to worry about the video component okay another question that I had captured before this meeting so with the being able to work remotely the the problem is the office phone still rings in the business location so how can they effectively forward that office phone to different people so they're not just forwarding it to one person and that one person is getting overloaded with phone calls even after hours yeah that's that's that's a huge it's a really good question so first I would say I would say if you don't already have voice over IP capabilities with your existing phone system so first thing I would do is contact either your IT company or or your phone or if not your phone vendor and ask them if the current system supports a voice over IP or VoIP you know voice expansion if it does then you should be able to buy some phones and get put them at people's homes and then they should be able to be you know add the office phone number to that so multiple people could answer if you can't do that or it gets pretty expensive you know one of the other things you could look to do would be very quickly by you know a bleep of voice over IP like application like a time think of a good example which is escaping me right now I can give you some name afterwards but you know you could buy like a VoIP solution online like maybe grasshopper could do it there's some other ones I can give you a full list but you know you could do is buy a voice over IP line which you could add the app onto someone's smart phone and then forward your office calls to this new voice over IP system that multiple people could answer and they're affordable you know with the app you're probably looking at you know I don't have my head but maybe 15 or 20 dollars per month per line so you know if you want three people on it be $50 a month and then just forward the office line to that and you could have multiple people ringing or you know that that's one way to to kind of work around it in the short run one little pro tip if you do forward your office number the best way to do it is call the phone company and make sure you ask them to forward and enable forward on busy because a lot of the mistakes that people make is when they forward their phone from the handset itself it will only allow one call forward so let's say you let say your most people calling the first person that's forwards if I answer it anyone else that calls gets a busy signal whereas if you have a forward on busy it'll keep forwarding so multiple calls cannot complete all right great you talked a bit about the personal email versus business email accounts this one came in before you started talking about that but the question really is should we forward business email to personal accounts and I think since you kind of already touched upon that could you expand your answer a bit to talk about people that may have just one or two employees or they're a family-owned business hmm well yeah I mean family owned businesses could still be quite quite large too but I you know I think listen I really discourage the foreword to a personal email I really really really strongly discourage that there there really shouldn't be a reason that I can't check my work email I'm not in the office you know if I don't have a word computer I should be able to go to a web portal of some kind and she see that email I just think it can be dangerous because once we forward that out to the personal email we really lose control of that from a business standpoint and you know I guess it depends on the business some extent but you know to me once you start forwarding to the personal email then I'm replying from my personal email so does the communication go off of there and it just opens a lot of questions that I think puts a business at risk and there's not a big cost associated to be able to check my work email from anywhere or there shouldn't be so you know if your email platform doesn't allow that I would ask a lot of questions because it should I don't know if I expand enough on that Wendy but if if someone else has a question deeper on that please ask me but I type the answer is I do not incur I just actively and strongly discourage forwarding working out to personally not okay one last question and then we'll move on to Araceli and of course if anyone has any questions that they would like to have answered that they haven't put in yet we can take all of the questions at the end as well but the last question before we move on are you seeing a lot of businesses being hacked right now yeah so I mean the amount of ink of attacks on business is absolutely increasing especially what's called phishing or spear phishing attacks emails that that pretend to be someone that they're not to try and get information from you which is you know what a phishing attack is spear phishing is just a very targeted one and and I would say this you know we're always trying to deliver a value not just to our clients but to the employees that work there you know one thing I would be you know cautious were and we're seeing a big ups again it's fake emails offering jobs and I mean to me that's just like the dirtiest of all of all dirty which is taking someone who's maybe been laid off and then trying to get them to give you their information and effort to theoretically get them a job that then you just try and steal their money so we're seeing a big increase in attack in general and just people trying to take advantage of the situation so critically important that we're we're extra extra vigilant right now all right thank you and of course if anyone has any other questions you can type them into the question box and we can answer them re if you can stick around we'll we'll have another question and answer session later I do want to move on thank you I do want to move on to Araceli Araceli is business owner of a cleaning service that right now she is helping and is one of the what I would consider also health heroes on making sure a nursing home is being kept safe and so I wanted her to come on and talk a bit about you know the proper sanitation guidelines right now and what you could be doing to keep not only your staff as well as your public safe if your open your doors to the public right now thank you very much Wendy for the invitation and also thank you very much re for covering and bringing such valuable information to the community like once he mentioned my name is Anna Sethi Pena and the business owners work when she does feeding services we've been providing services through Connecticut for the past 15 years and yes we are providing right now an essential services to a nursing home here in Haven and it's very critical it's a critical moment of critical time that we should you know we should know how we can respond to this how I train my staff that I always let them know you've prepared to respond to recover how can we do that it's steps to follow I am a strong believer of of making sure that everywhere that we go not just in a nursing home but everywhere that we go we were exposed to to all different things to all different you know viruses germs etc and keeping not only ourselves yo know healthy and and and well-being making sure that you bring into the workforce is bringing you know letting them know the rules of regulations the proper protocol that's going on right now the best way to train your staff is to let them know you know try to avoid make sure that you you do social business in practice you know constant hand-washing avoid anything that that can make you want to touch you know your face avoid touching your face hear your eyes your nose anything like that I always give them a call would probably go on a call as a single day in the morning just to go over the rules I'm probably sure that my staff is like okay the daily routine but it's just that critical than that important that you know for my employees to be safe not only are they trying to keep our residents safe but they're trying to keep themselves you know safe and to bring everyone around us with the safety and precaution this virus can be spread very easily a lot of people think that okay we are going to clean and disinfect isn't that the same thing no it's not unfortunately cleaning is not the same thing as disinfecting and I learned that through many webinars many conference cause a lot of studying a lot of getting to know all this information how do you clean or how do you disinfect or what are the steps what is it that you have to do cleaning is very it's basically your number one step you clean you make sure that you're taking whatever dirt grime is off the surfaces that's something that you're you do want to on a regular basis it's the same thing as you know a person would do early in the morning what you're going to do is brush your teeth you can't just walk out do to go to work without you know preparing yourself um I always tell them make sure you prepare that's the reason why we go on these steps we prepare to respond to recover preparing like I said and I mentioned cleaning cleaning the surfaces high touch surfaces we never think about it until now that the high surfaces can be torn off lights such as countertop handles that phone keyboard you know think process anything that you are constantly in high touch rings making sure you just inspect that not only just for your workplace but you know for the rest of whoever is going to come in contact or you know being able to expose to those surfaces a lot of people say you know how can I do this or how can i disinfect happen a clean is right now we are running so low and all these cleaning products what can I do to make sure that my staff is up to date with everything thankfully we have a supply a supplier of EDP that has tremendously Holden a lot of our supplies down for us make sure that we we stock up on all these cleaning products and everything that we do but if there is no solution to this and you become unaware of okay I can't get to a disinfecting product what can I do in order to keep on disinfecting meanwhile the products come in a lot of people think you know mixing bleach with vinegar that will help it or bleach with soap it won't help make mixing anything with bleach or mixing anything with ammonia that's only going to create an explosive of a chemical reaction you make sure you don't do that make sure that you use you know water with soap then that you can do that you can dilute the vinegar with water you can dilute bleach with water but never mix any chemicals making sure that when you're disinfecting the area is already cleaned in order for you to disinfect you disinfect by letting the proper solution sit on the surfaces sit on wherever your disinfecting make sure that you let it sit for at least six weeks and ninety seconds if you're just cleaning spraying cleaning and wiping you're not letting the proper sanitation process to happen it's like you're just going and cleaning for no reason sanitizing for just waste so make sure that that's something that you know that your employees your workforce your your area wherever you guys are doing that's something that you want to make sure that is being instructed not only to your your employees but to everyone make sure that if you're just inspecting like I said and letting it sit there for a while making sure that everything is just going to be at reach of disinfection that is just being monitored regularly cleaning of a clothing as for us my staff that works on a daily basis here at the nursing home I recommend them always bring extra set of clothes or even at home leave a dirty hamper or you know your your bin that you put your clothes in make sure that there's a trash bag there you take off your clothes before you can go inside your home and try to you know hug your kids or help your family or you know etc we never know what we're coming in contact make sure that you put your dirty clothes in a bag and then put it in to wash it with hot setting of temperature water that's something that you know has to be done how do we clean for example how do how would we clean and respond if the building or the facility has someone sick there obviously he would close he would close off the areas you right now that stays our car becoming a little bit more warmer and everything I would suggest opening up the windows making sure that you know air can ventilate through the system make sure that nobody goes in to that room within 24 hours of whoever has been infested by this corona virus making sure that if they are sick or an employee becomes that they stay home like Ari said communication is a key a key that you know having that communication between your employees your staff whoever is you know around you bring so much towards you know towards work towards the environment towards everywhere that you're that you're responding to I like I said I educated my my workers I educated my employees from cleaning to laundry to trash picking up making sure that they are aware of the symptoms making sure that they are aware of you know what should we do if you know of us gets tech where the proper protocol is one of the proper setup you should be taking a lot of this information you're able to find it in the website says OSHA gov I love OSHA they actually are giving out free tips they email them to you free tips on a daily basis every day is just one tip at a time that they're giving to you as a business owner or as an employee and it just reminds you on a daily basis like I said something new something to carry on something to you know inform like I said not only to you but also to the whole community out there I also get my information from the CDC gov it's for / coronavirus there's a lot of information there there's a lot of posters that you can be posting on your work fields whether you're still in business and you're working and you have employees there could you post it constantly where you know your sinks are making sure that they're constantly washing hands practicing social distancing making sure that they have the proper equipment for them to you know to do and practice in it and make sure that they can do their job that they are relying to to be done and also if you're wondering what can I do or what can I check in order for me to have the proper disinfecting chemicals if you're running out of them and maybe you don't have them in a store that you're looking for them if you go to epa.gov there's a list of disinfecting that also you can always find absolutely everywhere it tells you how to dilute in what you can use on what services and and all those things right now is just a critical time a very critical moment that we're living in but practicing you know the hand washings or you know social distancing making sure they it's only constant cleaning of high-touch surfaces it's something that we should always keep in mind making sure I know that they just passed a law that it's required by everyone using a facial mask unfortunately we're running out of you know facial mask and glove them in a proper attire because everyone needs it now nowadays it's just so hard I have personally has start making facial masks and it's amazing to know that you can actually make them out of a coffee filter and you know a breathable cloth I fear for my my employees I care for them as you know as much as I can and I want to make sure that I can you know provide them with the proper etiquette but unfortunately there's times that we don't have those resources what can we do how can we prepare how can we respond and how will we recover from all of this like I said unfortunately this is the virus that we're fighting against and we can't visually see it well how can we prepare it is by cleaning disinfecting making sure that everything's you know kept up to date up to standards up to you know the regulations and what is it that they're looking for and you know at this time I would probably say Wendy if there's any questions or anything that you know anyone would like to to ask or have an answer compassion to be respond yep I have two for you but I also wanted to bring up the resource links page just so that people can see the different resources around how to the guidelines from both the CDC and OSHA so I've brought that up on the screen but for for you Araceli um how often should the question is how often should we completely wipe down everything so basically once you clean it and you disinfect it so it's a two-step kind of a thing so you clean by making sure that your surfaces don't have you know any dirt and grime or anything like that how do you do that it's so fun water once that has been taking place then you go ahead and use disinfectant you disinfected with anything that has you know sixty percent of alcohol anything that you can think of like I said a lot of people are ours ours oh my goodness I don't I don't have anything right now to disinfect what are my other solutions what is it that I can you know what is my other backups resource bleach solution is one of them if you have five tablespoons or a third of a cup of bleach per gallon of water that helps you right there you let it sit for 60 to 90 seconds once you clean it you make sure you don't go and you know redo it again how often I would say depending on the work feel that you're working on us as residential care services providers we try to maintain the common area as clean as possible the residential drink by themselves we clean it twice a day morning and in probably early evening just to make sure that you know whatever has been coming in and out because there are some rooms that are being shared and there are some individuals you know a resident room so the ones that are being shared which is two two beds per room those are being a little bit more monitored just for the safety you know one is touching this the other one might touch it later on and just to keep that you know balance in between if it's just you know something that okay I'm here if I'm working by myself in my office and I can only clean it I was taking it one and then doing it before leaving twice it should be you know ideal all right great and I think you know what you're basically saying is that high traffic areas or high use areas should be clean more often than others if I can summarize yes definitely a little bit more to be paid attention to I mean we're constantly whoever is on the phone is you know constantly bringing it to the face yeah whoever's sitting on a desk you know sometimes they look at me and they're like okay use your pen and unfortunately there's a lot of people that looked at me weird and I'm like no I'm sorry there's another pen there um and not that I'm trying to you know I'm just trying to be cautious from not being able to spread any germs or anything like that or you know to receive them as well um as soon as they're done with that you know with the pen using it for either signing and signing out or anything i disinfected right away again that's something that it's more high-traffic areas again like I slash the saints of the table surfaces I mean that's like such as they're constantly turning on and off on and off those are something that we should be a little bit more aware and more mindful set of how we should you know protect ourselves from everything okay and one other question for you um what products do you use to disinfect so what we use I actually use them from like I said I use the vendor EBP EBP supply solution and one that actually caught a lot my like I said this is something that it was brought to me when I first started getting into it I was like well cleaning is the same thing as you know disinfecting but yet no it no it's not um there's actually like I said it's called oxy vert I'm not sure if I'm saying it correctly the specs um oh I see I are white and those are my disinfecting to go light and they also have you know the disinfecting if it's very similar to Clorox wipe that's something that then we keep high in demand and on on the supply list it does it's basically needed but I would recommend anyone that is you know looking for a brand or anything for disinfecting I would go right ahead and say Clorox wipes is your to go Lysol you know my father a disinfecting is also great pretty hard to find right now no these days it's just it's so hard like I said if worse comes to worse and there's no more you know resource where you can find all these cleaning products or anything like that if you by breach or if you have vinegar white vinegar white distilled vinegar that would also all is just diluting it making sure that everything's okay that list for the ebee the epa.gov again that's another list that's another resource linker it provides you a list of all the disinfecting products like I said I personally use the kaurav bleach white and I also use ones that are used for the facility for a nursing home facility as we are provided again like I said we're provided and we're supplied by EDP solution all right thank you I think I'll add that to my resource list before we send this out I don't see any more questions if you have any more questions or if you want to raise your hand please put those into the question box at this point I'm going to turn it over to Roseann to give updates from the Mid State Chamber of Commerce of course we have the link to the resource page and I'll let Roseann take it over and close out the webinar today good afternoon everyone happy Friday to all of you and I certainly want to extend my thanks again to Wendy Austin for coordinating this great series that's been provided a lot of valuable information and we are very grateful for that net and thank the panelists today again appreciate all of the great and timely information and we do have we've created a special resource page for businesses at Mid State Chamber comm there's a red tab at the top that you can click on we are really trying to update this as much as we can and this week I did receive some new and interesting information for additional funding that is coming out through entities such as Facebook and nab is another one and also the US Chamber has opened up a small business fund and applications will start being applications go live for that on Monday so you will find those links out there the score resource hub that also is marked new you'll find some interesting information map page score stands for the Service Corps of retired executives we work with them regularly in terms of providing workshops and counseling for small businesses or people thinking about going into business so if you were to go on that page and scroll down a little bit it does talk about some of the funding packages funding programs that have been available please note that some of those due to extremely high demand have been closed but as you do scroll down you will see information on again the US Chamber Fund there's a Facebook fund that is offering up to a 100 million dollars in grants for small businesses now also has a small business grant contest so you know again these are additional resources that are coming out and we will continue to update you on new things but also update you on on current programs as well I also want to know and please tell all your friends we don't have the link yet but we will be doing a special webinar next week that's going to be on Thursday April 23rd and it will be a program only in Spanish for our Hispanic business owners and H spanic business members we that will include information from the SBA with julio san cassiano sama will also be on the claw which is the Spanish American Merchants Association and head Co the Hartford Economic Development Corp there are also additional funding release packages for women and minority businesses so that will be the focus of that program on the 23rd that'll be at one o'clock and once we have the link we will post that on our events page will also get out on our Facebook page and that is all I have for updates today but please continue to check our site check our events calendar for updates on webinars and other programs and also like a fun Facebook all right great thank you we have another webinar on Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. same time that webinar will be around determining business insurance coverage during this time and when we are looking to kind of our spending right now and how much spending or outgo is going on versus income that's coming in sometimes it's good to relook at that business insurance so we'll be focusing on that on Tuesday as well as there's been a lot of questions around claims due to Co vat19 and so we have some experts that will talk a bit about whether or not you can actually make any claims so stay tuned for that that would be our fourth session of the series on Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. all right thank you everyone have a good day