In the first quarter of the year 2020, the COVID-19 virus hit the US and forced cities and states across the country to issue stay-at-home orders in an effort to slow down the spread of the virus. The challenge was how to continue to run the business while a ensuring the safety of our staff.

As the numbers of people testing positive for COVID-19 continued to steadily increase in early March, ASAE leadership made a decision to immediately shift to a 100% virtual environment. Effective Monday, March 16th, all staff began working virtually and were restricted from the office unless specific protocols were followed.

Since March, staff have transitioned quite well. As an organization, we had many staff who were working remotely one or two days a week prior to the pandemic. We had also moved all of our most critical applications to webbased platforms, and lastly, on the technology side, staff was already full engaged with using the Office 365 online platform.

We decided in May/June that we needed to take many things into consideration when deciding to open the office back up, primarily the safety of the staff and the fact that we have parents on staff who would have trouble coming into work if summer camps were closed and in-person schooling was not available. For these reasons, the organization decided to continue working virtually through the end of the year and reassess at that time.