Yesterday afternoon, Metamend VP of Marketing, Murray Owen and Reputation Management Specialist, David Howell joined Dave Davies and I on our Webcology show on WebmasterRadio.FM. The topic of the conversation focused on the amazing recovery Metamend made within 48-hours of the fire that destroyed our Canadian head office in Victoria BC.

The show is worth a listen for organizations that have yet to write or implement a disaster management plan. Facing the toughest challenge our 10-year old firm has ever faced, the Metamend team had a well thought-out road map to follow. When the administration put the plan to action early Sunday morning, every one of the staff knew what they had to do and set about doing it.

By Monday morning, we were each working from our home offices with a communications backbone in place and access to our common files reassigned and thus restored. By Tuesday, the team was as close to reclaiming its general working rhythm as possible. Looking back on a Friday morning, it is now possible to see beneficial sides to what could have otherwise been an unmitigated disaster.

From what I’ve gathered, the only client who noticed a difference between this week and last week was the one that shared the now shattered industrial complex our office used to be housed in. That’s a thankfully muted testimonial to the strength of our disaster management and recovery plan.

One interesting benefit our clients are almost certainly going to notice is that each of the staff is reporting the temptation to work longer hours. I’ve worked from home for almost four years now and can attest to the irresistible pull of the keyboard at both 7AM and 7PM. While a number of the Metamend team have long been known to work longer hours than others, almost all of us are reporting a 2 – 3 hour increase in actual work-time per day. While this might be seen as a sign of disaster driven over-compensation (the tendency to work harder in times of perceived emergency), it is more likely due to an increased ability to focus without the artificial boundaries imposed by a clock. Lunch gets pushed back to 3PM (when one’s body tells you to stop and eat) and work ends when dinner is served around 8ish.

Murray and David did a great job explaining the implementation of the disaster management plan and the stellar reputation management exercise the firm undertook in the early days following the fire. A previously recorded 16-minute interview with David on file at WebmasterRadio on Reputation Management as a search marketing service rounded out the hour.