Tip 2: Back up often, and ensure it has!
Great workplace behaviours you must acquire.
Hopefully you have read the other behaviours and you are working hard at acquiring them. Here is another!
Back up regularly, and ensure that it did!
If there is one single event in my life at the workplace that I learned a good lesson from the worst experience, it would be this…
I had the task of webmaster in a big property exhibition company in the UK, and everyday, I made updates, I had to back up the website. This site pulled thousands of visits every hour! I was very good and regular with my back up but the biggest mistake was, I never checked if it did actually back up everything I thought it would.
On the face of it, it backed up some directories, but the main database and vital files were are NOT backed up.
One day, the site went down, and I was so confident in the restoration, until it never happened. After a couple of days, we brought in some experts so help, and that is when we noticed that the backing up was badly flawed.
I hope you have learned from this! At your workplace, here is what you should do:
1. Back you regularly on multiple computers and external drives. There is a ‘Cloud’ facility these days, which is basically a remote storage facility. You can export important emails into safe places, and even re-send it to other emails that you have (check with your boss if company policies allow this). You can scan paper documents and save the soft copies, or just take photos of very important hard copy files and save them. They do not have to be in very high resolutions.
2. When you have backed up, try to open the files on another computer or server to make sure that EVERYTHING you intended to back up, did actually back up. If you are a software developer or web manager, or sales person… whatever, this will apply to you.
WARNING: Backing up in many places can also make your files vulnerable to access by unauthorized people. Make sure they are stored in safe and secure places. You can keep copies in your boss’s office.
There you go, take a look at the other workplace behaviours that can help you become a better team player and business person